It’s 11 a.m. Thursday and the Winter Meetings are slowly disintegrating but the Dodgers are not done dealing. In case you missed it, here’s what happened yesterday.
At the moment:
• The Dodgers didn’t select anyone in the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft.
• Among Wednesday’s major deals, only the trade for Howie Kendrick is official.
• The trades for Jimmy Rollins and Yasmani Grandal are not official. Neither is the reported Brandon McCarthy contract. Here’s what I wrote about the pending megatrade with the Padres.
• Zach Eflin and Tom Windle are reportedly the two pitchers going to Philadelphia to complete the Rollins trade.
So there’s a lot still up in the air. Just for fun, let’s assume the pending deals go through. Here’s what the Dodgers’ 25-man roster might look like if the season started in five minutes (because if the season started tomorrow, there would be more trades to account for):
Starting lineup:
Jimmy Rollins SS
Yasiel Puig RF
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Howie Kendrick 2B
Yasmani Grandal C
Carl Crawford LF
Juan Uribe 3B
Joc Pederson CF
Bench:
Andre Ethier OF
Chris Heisey OF
Scott Van Slyke OF/1B
Justin Turner IF
Darwin Barney IF
Alex Guerrero IF
A.J. Ellis C
Rotation:
Clayton Kershaw
Zack Greinke
Hyun-Jin Ryu
Brandon McCarthy
Juan Nicasio
Bullpen:
Kenley Jansen
Joel Peralta
J.P. Howell
Brian Wilson
Brandon League
The Dodgers won’t have 10 pitchers and 15 position players when they set their Opening Day roster. That’s just the current state of imbalance. (Apologies to Chris Hatcher.) If the Dodgers are going to make this work, they can start by trading from their surplus of reserve infielders and/or outfielders and nab a starting pitcher. They probably will, since the intent in acquiring Nicasio was not to keep him as the fifth starter all season.
Who would you trade? Who would you keep?