Trade Targets: Left handed relievers

My posts about Hiroki Kuroda and Wandy Rodriguez were both about starting pitchers, but the Yankees seem frustrated with Boone Logan and they were believed to be targeting Lefty help either way. Left handed relievers are hard to come by and with Pedro Feliciano out for the year the Yankees were going to have to acquire someone. They did sign Randly Flores and Greg Smith to minor league deals but neither have been especially impressive in AAA and Smith has been a starter in the past. Right now Flores seems like a better option right now than Logan and the recent Lefties who have passed through waivers seems to imply that Logan would likely not be claimed and would go down to AAA Scranton. Tim Dierkes of MLBTR recently wrote a piece about potentially available lefty relievers. The Yankees will likely look for a lefty who is only signed for this year and not within the division so that narrows down those potentially available. I doubt that the Dodgers would make Kuo available and Hideki Okajima was not picked up off waivers by anyone so I doubt he is going to traded for. The A's posses three lefties Brian Fuentes, Jerry Blevins and New Haven, Connecticut native Craig Breslow. Fuentes is signed until 2012 and has a $6.5 million team option for 2013, while Breslow and Blevin are both under team control after this year. Breslow has the best ERA, but his split against lefties this year is even worse than Logans with lefties hitting .409 against his, however his career split against lefties is .218 and lefties are hitting .318 against Blevin, but again they have hit .237 against him in his career. Fuentes has also not done well against lefties this year with lefties hitting .300 against him despite hitting only .217 during his career. Randy Choate is another option and while he is signed for 2012 as well he is signed to an extremely team friendly contract of $1 million in 2011 and $1.5million in 2012. In 13 innings he has been fantastic giving up only 1 ER and holding lefties to a .108 BA, however his team friendly contract would likely make it hard to pry him away from the Marlins.
That leaves really one option of a lefty reliever whom the Yankees can acquire and he's one that we just saw recently, that would be Cubs lefty John Grabow.  Grabow's showing against the Yankees was not particularly impressive but he faced two right handed batters and got Martin to pop out and Swisher out at the plate. Grabow has held lefties to .178 BA in 30.1 IP, but his career numbers are not great with lefties hitting .258 against him and even last year they hit .294 against him. Grabow has a big salary this year making $4.8 million and he may be easily acquired by the Yankees for salary relief and a low level prospect or two. The problem of course with Grabow is that we could acquire him and he could do almost nothing and the Yankees may choose to go after a better LOOGY candidate but it will be hard to get one who is effective and is a rental.