2010 Offseason Targets

I had to take a break from the series last week cause of that annoying paying job that I jeopardize every day spending way too much time here on TCR. So I'm gonna double up the efforts and today we look at some more potential center field candidates. Let's start with Randy Winn.

I'll go through a few more lower level free agents this week and pick it up to some possible bigger names next week. As we know, there's talk that if the Cubs can move Milton Bradley, they'd put Kosuke Fukudome back to right field and try and improve the outfield defense with a more true center fielder. And that's where Mike Cameron comes in...

Trying to figure out which relievers the Cubs may try to acquire - if any - to bolster a poor bullpen performance is like trying to find a decent Cubs position player developed by the Cubs farm system over the last 35 years. For all I know the Cubs won't do much but try and resign John Grabow and then see who might stick from the current crop of youngsters plus a few Chad Fox-type reclamation projects that they might hope to stick...and probably Chad Fox himself.

We do know Hendry likes his strikeout pitchers and Escobar has a 7.89 K/9 rate for his career which trends higher when he's worked out of the bullpen as you'd expect. There hasn't been much chatter on Escobar since he went down with a shoulder injury after pitching just 5 innings in 2009 (and he missed all of 2008 as well after labrum surgery), but I think it's a fair bet he'll come back in 2010 as a reliever...that is if he's coming back at all.

Let's move back to the infield and check in on another possible second basemen...the Rays Akinori Iwamura.

To view past articles in this series, you can always click on the 2010 Offseason Targets tag in the byline above.

Let's give credit to Arizona Phil for this suggestion as he pointed out that Rajai Davis qualified for Super Two status and could be available if the A's want to save some money.

As I mentioned earlier, this is an exercise at some of the low profile names the Cubs could or should look at this offseason. And remeber, these articles are designed to just start the discussion, not settle the case one way or another.

I think it's a fair assumption that the Cubs will be likely focusing at second base and either center or right field along with some bullpen help. So today's guest is another possible non-tender candidate, Marlins outfielder Jeremy Hermida.

Hermida was the 11th pick in the 2002 draft and was the top Marlins prospect from 2004 to 2006 according to Baseball America.

I'm in the midst of one of my hell projects at work, this one just happens to be a little more hellish and is gonna last until December. In order to keep the fun going around here, I thought I'd present some reasonable trade and free agent targets over the next weeks - some of the low-hanging fruit that will probably be more in line with Hendry's budget for 2010.  I'm not really going to make a case one way or another, rather just try and open up the discussion. Today's guest is Atlanta Braves second basemen Kelly Johnson....

Braves GM Frank Wren came out today and said Martin Prado will pretty much go into 2010 as the their starting second basemen which leaves Kelly Johnson as prime trade bait. It doesn't mean the Braves have to move him, but he's certainly going to be available for the right price, which can't be a whole lot for a guy with a .692 OPS last year. He's also arbitration eligible and coming off a 2.85M payday in 2009, so it's very possible - let's go ahead and call it likely - that he'll just end up being non-tendered if he's not traded before December 12th.