Every season, there’s always one thing in demand at the trade deadline — starting pitching. Nearly every contender outside of Philadelphia is in the hunt for another rotation arm, and the demand always outstrips the supply. While there’s no Cliff Lee on the block this year, there are still some interesting arms who could make a difference down the stretch. Here are the best candidates:

PLAYER: Edwin Jackson
TEAM: White Sox
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Yankees, Red Sox, Reds
CONTRACT STATUS: $8.35 million, free agent at end of year
PROJECTED WAR: 1.8

The White Sox might end up trading Jackson even if they get back in the race for the AL Central title, as they currently have six starting pitchers for just five slots. Jackson is no stranger to changing teams, as he’s been dealt by Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Detroit, and Arizona since arriving in the Major Leagues. Given the White Sox surplus of arms and his impending free agency, he’s a good bet to be packing his bags once again.

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The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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The month of June marks the unofficial beginning of the trade season, and so we thought it would be helpful to run down a list of which players might be for sale at some point this summer. But, rather than just run down a list of potential trade targets, we thought that we would spend the week discussing the most interesting players at each position and have compiled a list of the best players available at each spot, along with their expected production going forward and notes about which teams might be possible fits as buyers. We hope you enjoy the series.

Kicking off our week of looking at trade targets are the players who will be acquired primarily for their work with the bat: first basemen and designated hitters. Note that there might be some overlap across the posts as some players can handle multiple positions.

Here are five realistic trade candidates at the position(s), based on projected WAR over the rest of the season, contract status, the state of their current employers and the needs of various potential contenders.

PLAYER: Billy Butler
TEAM: Royals
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Angels, Rays
CONTRACT STATUS: Four-year, $30 million deal through 2014
PROJECTED WAR: 2.1

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I think I’m like most baseball fans in that when I think of a designated hitter, I think of home runs. The DH spot has usually been filled by power hitters since its inception in 1973, and that makes sense. If a player is playing a position with no defensive value, he needs to produce on offense. Home runs are the most valuable offensive event. The most valuable hitters in any given year usually have plenty of home runs and extra base hits. One often hears that a player who doesn’t hit for power doesn’t have the bat to play on the “easy end” of the defensive spectrum, and and even moreso in the case of a player who is primarily a DH. Billy Butler is a current example of a player who mostly fills the DH spot, but since he hasn’t hit for much power (yet), you will sometimes hear people say that he doesn’t fit the profile of a DH. Without focusing specifically on Butler, I’d like to write briefly about what it means to “hit well enough to be DH,” and then to see how often that actually happens with a relatively low amount of power.

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If you want a quick glimpse of some players who probably shouldn’t qualify for the batting title, go to the leader boards, click on Advanced, and then click on wOBA. There you will see a list of players whose wOBAs range from pretty damn bad, Will Venable at .285, to downright putrid, Miguel Tejada at .224. Some of these players figure to rise from their unworthy starts and earn their spots in the lineup. Others will find spots on the bench, or, in some cases, the waiver wire. Such is life in baseball.

Despite their horrible overall production, some of these players have managed to get their scant few hits in a timely manner. A few of the bottom dwellers have racked up a decent number of runs and RBI in their travels. While it’s not at all indicative of their talent, it has helped their team in some small way. I’d like to highlight a couple of these instances today.

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It’s only May 17th, but for the Minnesota Twins, the 2011 season is essentially over. Losers of nine straight, they now stand just 12-27 and are 13 1/2 games behind the first place Indians. They’ve been atrocious at nearly every aspect of the game; they rank last in wOBA and last in xFIP, a pretty awful combination. Even the eventual return of Joe Mauer won’t be enough to right the ship – there are just too many problems to overcome to save this season, and the Twins need to start playing for 2012 and beyond.

The problem is that I’m not sure how much they can actually do. For most teams, when they fall out of the race they promote youngsters from the farm and put the veterans on the trade block to try and add a few prospects to the organization. The Twins don’t really have all that much in the way of interesting assets to sell off, though.

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Despite returning much of the same staff that finished 3rd in the American League in WAR last season, the Minnesota Twins currently own the worst pitching staff in all of baseball. The Twins’ approach to pitching has already been highly criticized this season, beginning with their insistence that Francisco Liriano “pitch to contact.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, that approach may be the main cause of the Twins’ rotation struggles this season.
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You have probably heard that Francisco Liriano threw a no-hitter last night. You may have also heard that he posted the lowest Game Score of any no-hitter in history, or that his xFIP for the game was 5.96 (yes, seriously). Essentially, as soon as the game ended, the “Liriano Throws a No-Hitter” headlines were replaced by “Reasons Why Liriano’s No-Hitter Wasn’t Very Impressive.” The guy’s 15 minutes of fame didn’t even last 15 seconds before his accomplishment was overcome by a wave of explanations on why it was more of an historic fluke than a spectacular pitching performance.

While I understand the sentiments of my fellow writers, and agree that it’s worth pointing out that Liriano’s no-hitter was, err, unconventional, I also think we shouldn’t overlook the obvious — Francisco Liriano threw a no-hitter.

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After five terrible starts to open the season, it’s time to wonder what the heck is wrong with Francisco Liriano. Finally healthy in 2010, Liriano delivered the best season of his career – in which he finished first in the American League in xFIP and second in the AL in FIP (behind Cliff Lee). This season, Liriano looks less like the Minnesota Twins’ ace, and more like their 25th man. With Kevin Slowey preparing to take over in the rotation, can Liriano turn it around before he loses his spot?
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The Minnesota Twins are generally criticized for being too conservative. But this season, they have shown a bit of early-season panic. First, Joe Nathan was granted his wish of being removed from the closer role two weeks into the season, and now manager Ron Gardenhire has decided to fill his vacancy at second base with a guy who hasn’t played there in six years.
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