San Francisco Giants: Building a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers

The biggest priority for the Los Angeles Dodgers will be upgrading the bullpen.

They could definitely use another high-leverage reliever and San Francisco Giants closer Will Smith might be the best reliever available this summer.

I have already touched on the type of package I expect the Giants to receive for Smith in my Twins sell-off series piece. The Dodgers may have the need, but I’m not sure they will be willing to send the top-tier young assets it will take to get a deal done to their biggest rival.

That said, the Giants have enough bullpen assets to help the Dodgers even without trading Smith.

Nick Vincent may have recently played himself out of being a trade chip, but both Tony Watson and Sam Dyson would be welcome additions to the Dodgers’ bullpen.

For what it’s worth, I also think Joe Panik could be an interesting fit to platoon with Kike Hernandez at second base. However, Zaidi seems to like the St. John’s product and I don’t know that the Dodgers would offer enough to make a deal worthwhile.

While Giants fans may not be fond of Bobby Evans tenure as team president, the deal to acquire Dyson from the Texas Rangers in exchange for Hunter Cole in June 2017 stands out as a bright spot.

The 31-year-old has re-established himself as one of the best high-leverage relievers in baseball. He is posting the best strikeouts per nine innings (9.0) and walks per nine innings (1.3) rates of his career while logging a 2.67 ERA with strong peripherals across the board.

If not for Smith’s dominance in the closer role, we might be talking about Dyson as the Giants’ representative at the All-Star Game.

Dyson also has one more year of team control via the arbitration process. That gives the Giants some leverage in trade talks. If they want to wait until the offseason or even next year’s deadline to move him, they can. His value will likely never be higher than it will be this summer, though.

Watson is not on the same level as Dyson in terms of value, but he is still a solid lefty out of the pen who would help any contender. Furthermore, he is also under team control beyond this season with a club option for 2020.

A package of Dyson and Watson could help solidify the Dodgers pen for the next season and a half.

Now let’s figure out the details.