If the Dodgers aren’t budging on Brian Dozier, the Giants have a shot

There’s nothing else going on in the world, so let’s talk about a potential Giants trade with almost zero chance of happening. The path to the Giants getting Brian Dozier — a power-hitting slugger they could certainly use — is still a murky one. But the Dodgers are exploring other options for second base, according to Ken Rosenthal. Other options include Logan Forsythe, Ian Kinsler, and Luis Valbuena.

This would leave Dozier available for the Giants to swoop in, and, boy, would I sure like the Giants to acquire him.

The holdup with the Dodgers and Twins, apparently, is that the Twins want more than pitching prospect Jose De Leon and assorted lesser prospects. The Dodgers feel that this is a fair return, and Rosenthal explains why they might think that:

The Dodgers were willing to part with De Leon and more knowing that Dozier’s season was an outlier, that he has never played in a large market, that he strikes out above the league average.

Don’t care about the large market. Don’t care about the strikeouts. But let’s assume that Brian Dozier is not as good as he was last year. Let’s assume that he’s only as good as the previous two seasons, and that he isn’t a true 40-homer hitter. How good would he be, then?

Really, really good. His 2015 fade in the second half was awful, but he’s put together a three-year stretch that allows us to be convinced that he’s pretty good at mashing dingers, pretty good at playing the infield, and an overall valuable player. The kind a contending team would want at bargain prices, especially if they were over the salary-cap tax. The kind of player worth moving to third base. Maybe even the kind of player who could force a move for the Gold Glove second baseman.

And if he’s actually a 40-homer hitter now, well, that’s just ducky.

What kind of prospect is De Leon? He’s a 24-year-old right-hander, who was ranked as a top-30 prospect by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and MLB.com before the season. He’s rocketed up through the system, making just 11 starts in A-ball before moving up to Double-A for 16 starts, then moving up to Triple-A for 16 starts before getting called up to the majors. He throws in the mid-90s, and he’s struggled with injuries.

So, no, the Giants don’t have a perfect comp. Tyler Beede lacks the strikeouts, and while he makes up for a little with his relative durability and draft pedigree, he wouldn’t be an apple-to-apple comparison. That means they would have to add more. And considering they weren’t happy with De Leon and more from the Dodgers, that means they would have to add more and more and more and more.

At the very least, though, I’ll back off the original idea that it had to be Joe Panik to get the Twins to listen at all. There’s a small chance. But it’s a chance worth writing about, considering there’s absolutely nothing else going on in the world right now. Nothing at all.

J.D. Martinez makes more sense. But I’m still very much into the idea of Dozier in the infield, and Eduardo Nuñez providing depth. The Dodgers might be looking elsewhere, and that’s pretty okay news.