Los Angeles Dodgers: Could a helping Hand help fix their bullpen?

The Los Angeles Dodgers could target Brad Hand to help their bullpen before the trade deadline

The Los Angeles Dodgers again find themselves at the top of the NL West and the National League. The two time defending NL Champions certainly look like they could make it three in a row. However, if they have one weakness it looks it could be getting the ball to Kenley Jansen.

The Los Angeles Dodgers currently sit at 16th in bullpen ERA. They are 29th in strikeouts but are tied for fifth in batting average against. Pedro Baez, Dylan Floro, and Scott Alexander have been okay thus far. Their big free agent signing was Joe Kelly, who has a 7.59 ERA. The sabermetric way isn’t to spend big in the bullpen, but to accumulate as many arms as possible and see what shakes out. If they are going to finally get over the hump, they may need to throw this theory out the window and build up the bridge.

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The Cleveland Indians acquired Hand and Adam Cimber from the San Diego Padres last season for catching prospect Francisco Mejia, who was one of the top catching prospects in all of baseball. Hand comes with two more years of team control at a reasonable cost of $7.5 million next year and a team option of $10 million for the 2021 season.

So who could the Los Angeles Dodgers part with? They may start at the position the Indians dealt to get Hand. Catcher. Luckily, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a few. Four of their top 13 prospects per MLB Pipeline are catchers. For this exercise, I’m going to say the Los Angeles Dodgers part with catcher Will Smith. The Fresh Prince of catching has gotten a cup of coffee in the show and would be an upgrade to build with over Roberto Perez and Kevin Plawecki.

The Cleveland Indians could also use an outfielder, but the Los Angeles Dodgers don’t really have that go give since Alex Verdugo is such a contributor to the offense now. They could part with an arm through and Cleveland could use another young, controllable arm, especially if Trevor Bauer and Corey Kluber eventually find their way out of town.  For this, we’ll add Dennis Santana to the trade package, the Los Angeles Dodgers sixth-ranked prospect. He’s had a cup of coffee in the bigs as well, and while he has an ERA over six this year in AAA, last year between AA and AAA, he had a 2.54 ERA and struck out 65 in 41 innings before a season-ending injury.

The Los Angeles Dodgers get a bullpen arm they can trust. The Cleveland Indians get two building blocks up the middle for their future.

A bird in the hand may be worth two in the bush, but this hand may be worth the Los Angeles Dodgers first championship since 1988.