Cleveland Indians: Should Tribe target a Blake Treinen trade?

The Cleveland Indians have a known issue with their bullpen and keeping leads. Could they remedy this with a trade for Oakland closer Blake Treinen.

Blake Treinen is a 29 year old right hander and he’s the closer for the Oakland Athletics, and he’s dominating. Treinen has a 1.00 ERA with 12 saves over the first two months of the season.

While the Cleveland Indians already have a closer, Treinen would make for a wonderful setup man and help solidify the back end of this bullpen. This is his first full year as the closer for the A’s, but he had 16 saves in fill in duty last year.

Over 27 innings, Treinen has a 11.0 K/9 and is 12 of 14 on save opportunities this year.

Why should the Indians want Treinen?

This dude’s stuff is electric. I mean it’s just unfair to opposing hitters. Look at this.

I highly encourage you to check out the rest of @PitchingNinja’s GIFs on Blake “The Witch” Treinen. His stuff is filthy.

He’s been an effective closer for the A’s and he’s dominated this year. There’s plenty to love about this guy.

What’s Treinen’s contract look like?

Treinen is in his first year of arbitration and is getting paid $2.15 million this year. He has two more years of arbitration left. Given his extended team control, getting Treinen and his closer experience could be useful considering Cody Allen and Andrew Miller are free agents after the season and it’s highly possible that one or both won’t return.

His salary might see a big increase the next two years if he stays in that closer’s role, but with his modest $2.15 million salary this year, he won’t get to be too expensive for the Cleveland Indians to take on.

What would a trade for Treinen look like?

A relatively young closer with team control for the next two and a half years could carry a decently high price to acquire. But Treinen doesn’t exactly have a long track record in the ninth inning that would cause some teams to jack up their asking price.

It would take at least a mid-level prospect or two for the Cleveland Indians to pry Treinen away from the A’s, if they even want to move him. It might be tough to convince Oakland to move on from their closer.

The way this bullpen has been performing so far this season, the Indians front office is likely willing to pay nearly any price to fix that group.

I would expect that, to get Treinen, the Indians would have to give up two of their prospects in the 6-20 range on MLB Pipeline. The A’s can have their choice of any two of those prospects in that range, and I would think that could be enough to get a deal done and help fix this Tribe bullpen.

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The Athletics are not expected to contend this year and should be sellers at the deadline. Their rebuild seems like it may never end, but the Indians should be interested in getting a pitcher with some of the nastiest stuff in the game.