Who Wants Brian Dozier?

Brian Dozier had himself quite the 2016 season. If you want to be technical, you could say he had quite the second half of the 2016 season, but that’s splitting hairs — he was still pretty good in the first half. It wasn’t historically superlative, but for second basemen in this millennium, it was pretty impressive. Now the Minnesota Twins have essentially made him available, and “four to five” teams are said to be interested in acquiring his services. Let’s take a look at who those teams could be.

First, let’s get some context on Dozier’s 2016 season and him, as a player, overall. Here’s a table with the best seasons by a second baseman since 2000:

As you can see, Dozier’s 2016 season ranks 25th on this list, with 14 players — the majority of whom are no longer playing — accounting for the 24 seasons superior to Dozier’s most recent campaign. Chase Utley accounts for five of them all by himself.

One area where Dozier does stand alone, though, is the power he’s exhibited. Dozier’s .278 ISO in 2016 easily ranks first among second basemen this millennium (Jeff Kent’s 2000 season is second at .262) and is fourth-best all-time, behind three seasons from some guy named Rogers Hornsby. That’ll happen when you rack up 42 homers. The only other second basemen to knock 40 homers in a season are Davey Johnson (43, 1973), Hornsby (42, 1922) and Ryne Sandberg (40, 1990). Dozier’s career arc profiles more similarly to Johnson’s than Hornsby or Sandberg’s, though there’s no shame in failing to match two of the best second basemen in baseball history.

For his career, Dozier is pretty similar to the player he was in 2016, sans the power spike. While Dozier had certainly been trending toward hitting for more power in each season of his career, he had never approached the .278 ISO he recorded in 2016. It’d be hard to imagine him duplicating that feat in his age-30 season, but given that he had a three-year track record of above-average power prior to 2016, one can feel comfortable in the knowledge that he will still have good pop moving forward.

Said pop is a necessary element of his offensive profile, because he has hit for a poor batting average for a sufficient enough period that we can say it’s probably not a fluke. His batting average had been sitting in a narrow band between .234 and .244 for four years before he jumped to .268 last season — and .268 itself isn’t anything to write home about. Dozier compensates somewhat for his lack of base hits by providing positive value on the bases; his defensive game is also strong. Nevertheless, much like Dan Uggla, if the power goes, so does the bulk of Dozier’s value. It’s for this reason that the Twins — beyond any considerations about their location on the win curve — are right to be shopping Dozier this winter.

Another reason they’re wise to be shopping him is because of his contract: he’s owed just $6 million in 2017 and $9 million in 2018, before becoming a free agent following what will be his age-31 season. That’s a mighty tantalizing contract both in terms of dollars and length. As such, the Twins have stated that they’d need to be very impressed with an offer on Dozier to move him. While that is likely posturing — as we’ve stated, there are some very good reasons to trade him right now as opposed to July or next offseason — they can command a pretty good return for him.

The Dodgers are the one known team in the market for Dozier, and if they truly want him, it would seem likely that they could get that deal done in short order. Certainly, they have good reason to. Their current mix of second basemen, led by Kiké Hernandez, grades out as just the 22nd-best unit in the game as we stand here today. Hernandez profiles better as a utility player than he does a starter, and his performance will be dictated largely by his batting average on balls in play, which has fluctuated wildly in his three seasons in the majors. Dozier would be a big upgrade as a starting second baseman, and would allow the Dodgers to put Hernandez back into that utility role.

The Dodgers not only have the need at the keystone, they also have the means to get a deal done. From high-level prospects like Yadier Alvarez, Cody Bellinger, Willie Calhoun, Jose De Leon, and Alex Verdugo to lower-ceiling major-league players like Trayce Thompson or Andrew Toles — or even a wild card like Yasiel Puig, as has been speculated — the Dodgers’ talent stable is fully stocked.

Of course, other clubs besides just the Dodgers should be interested in Dozier. The Yankees have been mentioned, and while Brian Cashman poured cold water on the report, he left wiggle room. While he said that he personally had not had contact with the Twins, that left open the possibility that someone on his staff could have had contact with the Twins. I have no reason to engage in such speculative talk, but certainly the projections show that the Yankees’ interest would be warranted. Our depth charts peg Dozier for 3.1 WAR this year, compared to 1.1 WAR for Starlin Castro. Our depth charts do call for Dozier to receive 100 extra plate appearances, but the Steamer600 projections paint a similar picture: 2.8 WAR for Dozier versus 1.2 for Castro.

In addition to the Dodgers and Yankees, the Angels have a clear need at second base, as they are currently ranked dead last in our second-base depth charts, and there isn’t a ton of promise in any one of their players. Nominally, Kaleb Cowart holds some degree of promise — in that he doesn’t possess a long track record of futility at the major-league level, that is — but the 14 wRC+ he produced in 87 major-league plate appearances this past year suggests that he has failed in his brief time as a major-league hitter. Whether the Angels have the prospect package to rival that of the Dodgers’ or Yankees’ is far less certain. They would probably need those teams to drop out of the running.

From there, it becomes far less clear which teams with designs on competing in 2017 should be in the market for Dozier. The Royals could be, but as Ken Rosenthal noted this week, the Royals have a lot of tough decisions to make this winter and it might be easier to just roll out Raul Mondesi and see what he can do with 500 PAs. If the Pirates want a sure thing rather than the uncertainty that Josh Harrison (health) and Alen Hanson (inexperience) offer, they could be a fit. If the Cubs wanted to shift Ben Zobrist to the outfield full-time, they could be in play, but the Cubs may already have too many outfielders as is. And of course there’s always the mystery team.

Ultimately, the return demanded by Minnesota will depend on how far away they see themselves from legitimate contentions. If they think their window is 2019 and beyond, they don’t necessarily need to jump for major-league-ready players. If that is the case — if they’re targeting players who have only played in Low- or High-A and who will matriculate in late 2018 or early 2019 — then that could widen the scope of teams who could be in play. Only time will tell, but with Dozier’s presence at the Winter Meetings and the Twins having good reasons to trade him, it might not be long before we have our answer.