According to ESPN’s Jayson Stark, the Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim are “trying to feverishly trade” outfielder/designated hitter Bobby Abreu. While this has been the case for much of the spring, Stark wonders if the Angels should also consider moving young slugger Mark Trumbo in order to reinforce their shaky bullpen.
When it became evident that the Angels wouldn’t have enough at-bats to satisfy Abreu, the veteran requested a trade. Los Angeles has attempted to submit to Abreu’s request and nearly did find a taker in the Cleveland Indians. However, the teams couldn’t agree on Abreu’s salary figures and who would pick up how much of the veteran’s tab, and a deal ultimately fell through.
Rather than just trade Abreu by himself, Stark thinks the Angels should try to package Trumbo and Abreu together to make a deal more palatable for potential suitors. Stark speculated that it would make sense for the Angels to “shop Trumbo for a young, controllable bullpen arm and tell interested teams they want to throw in Abreu and pay all of his salary to get him out of their mix”.
Stark admits that there’s no indication that the Angels are currently thinking this way, but he considers it to be a “sensible enough scenario”.
If the Trumbo-at-third experiment isn’t working out (he’s only made three starts there this season) and LA is good with Kendrys Morales as their DH, then it could make sense for the club to look to trade the Trumbo. However, I’m not sure if packaging Trumbo with Abreu and thus reducing his value is the way to go here. Even if teams were interested in Abreu, would they really be interested in bringing in two corner outfield/first baseman/DH-types in the same trade?
For more on the Angels be sure to check out Halo Hangout.
You can follow Call to the Pen on Twitter at @FSCalltothePen or like us here on Facebook.