5 deals to address team needs

Baseball generally gets put on pause on Thanksgiving. It’s one of those rare days when even the busiest executives learn to unwind at least a little, forsaking the discussion of deals for the family forays and feasts that pervade the holiday.

This is, however, merely a brief respite from the hyper-active Hot Stove season. Much like you in your holiday shopping, general managers are looking for deals right now, and that five-player swap between the D-backs and Mariners could be but a preview of the blockbuster bartering to come.

• Hot Stove Tracker

With that in mind, and in the spirit of Black Friday, here are five swaps I’d like to see based on team needs and fits.

1. White Sox trade LHP Chris Sale to the Braves for 2B/SS Ozzie Albies, LHP Sean Newcomb, 3B Austin Riley and RHPs Matt Wisler and Lucas Sims

Maybe it’s pushing things to suggest the Braves could contend in 2017. Maybe it relies on too much bloated belief in the smallish sample of the club’s second-half offensive production. But the Braves are moving into a new ballpark, and the modern game doesn’t really give a hoot what you did last year. If you can hang around .500 into July, you can put yourself in position to contend for a postseason entry. And if what we saw from the Braves’ bats late in the year was real and they had a rotation fronted by Sale and Julio Teheran followed by the old geezers (R.A. Dickey and Bartolo Colon) and all the kids they’ve compiled, who knows? That might actually be enough for such contention.

The question, of course, is whether the Braves are really ready to push their ample prospect chips to the center of the table. I still somehow doubt it. But at least with Sale, they’d be doing so for a guy who is under very reasonable contractual control ($38 million total, with the ’18 and ’19 club options exercised) for the next three seasons. He’s also left-handed, offsetting the Braves’ currently all-right-handed outlook.

Shortstop Dansby Swanson isn’t going anywhere, but fellow middle infielder Albies (No. 12 on MLBPipeline.com’s Top 100 Prospects list) could be the headliner of the White Sox haul, depending on Chicago’s feelings about his recovery from a fractured right elbow. The Braves would be giving up a key piece but also trading from a position of depth.

They also include fellow Top 100 entry Newcomb (No. 46), who was acquired in last year’s Andrelton Simmons swap with the Angels; Wisler, who has compiled 265 2/3 innings in the bigs; Riley, a projectable run producer; and Sims, a 2012 first-rounder with a good fastball and breaking ball who finished at Double-A after making 11 appearances (10 starts) in Triple-A and could be close. That’s four of the Braves’ top 14 prospects, plus Wisler. Maybe Atlanta could dig deeper and try to pry a year of Todd Frazier away from the Sox to further up the ante for ’17 .

Anyway, the main takeaway here is that Sale won’t come at a discount.

2. Twins trade 2B Brian Dozier to the Dodgers for RHPs Jose De Leon, Yadier Alvarez and Jordan Sheffield

The Dodgers have a second-base hole to fill, and they need to improve against left-handed pitching. Dozier solves both of those issues. Not only is he coming off a 42-homer onslaught in ’16, but he had the …

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