The Tampa Bays Rays have undergone a fire sale this offseason that started with trading the best player in their franchise’s history, Evan Longoria, to the San Francisco Giants.
They have also traded one of their top pitchers in recent years, Jake Odorizzi, to the Minnesota Twins, one of their top bats in Steven Souza to the Arizona Diamondbacks and designated All-Star outfielder Corey Dickerson for assignment all within the past week.
It is clear that the Rays are headed for a rebuild, so many people around the league are beginning to question whether their remaining trade chips, Chris Archer, Kevin Kiermaier and Alex Colome may be the next ones to go.
Rays general manager Erik Neander recently addressed that topic though, saying it is extremely unlikely that they trade any more of their top players, via Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times:
“I would say extremely unlikely,” he said. “Our focus at this point is we’d like to add a little bit. We’re not looking to pull this thing back.”
If the Rays were to make Archer available then the Los Angeles Dodgers would likely be among the teams that are interested as they have been linked to him for a while and could be searching for a power right-handed arm after losing Yu Darvish to the Chicago Cubs.
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman is very familiar with the Rays organization as he previously served as their general manager.
He has done multiple deals with the Rays in the past few years since coming over to the Dodgers, most recently acquiring Logan Forsythe for Jose De Leon a year ago.
The Dodgers have the prospects to put together a package to acquire a player of Archer’s caliber, so even if they don’t make a trade before Opening Day it will be something to monitor throughout the course of the season leading up to the trade deadline.
