Starting pitchers among Major League Baseball's free agents continue to come off the board quickly: Stephen Strasburg followed by Gerrit Cole followed by Madison Bumgarner, Wade Miley, Julio Teheran and Gio Gonzalez, all faring better than anybody might have expected last winter. With the preferred pitching pendulum in MLB seemingly swinging back from relievers to starting pitchers again, there is a desperate need for rotation help in the industry.
The Minnesota Twins are looking for help, as are the Chicago White Sox (although they did add Dallas Keuchel), the Toronto Blue Jays, the Los Angeles Dodgers and others. With the free-agent cupboard mostly cleaned out, clubs are increasingly digging into trade possibilities, which is why the name of the Cleveland Indians' Mike Clevinger has popped up, and why executives have speculated that the Pittsburgh Pirates will try to fix Chris Archer before dangling him in June or July, or sooner.
Because of the rotation starvation, the Yankees will be able to make a decent deal to move the contract of J.A. Happ, and the Boston Red Sox might be able to construct some trades of David Price and/or Nathan Eovaldi, to shed at least some financial obligation. Other teams believe the Seattle Mariners, in the midst of a rebuild, would flip Marco Gonzales and Yusei Kikuchi for the right offers.
