Winter Meetings Shopping List: AL Central

The White Sox are a mess. They have one player with real power and patience, Adam Dunn. He's only a slightly above-average hitter because of his low batting average, and the Sox further squander his value by asking him to wear a glove about half the time. According to rumor, the White Sox are focused on third base and catcher right now, which is setting themselves a high bar given scarcity at those positions. At catcher, they re-upped the J.P Arencibia-style Tyler Flowers for lack of anything better to do, their best prospect at the position being an impatient 26-year-old who sounds like a sneeze. Altogether, Sox catchers hit .196/.238/.325 last year, which is in the bottom 30 seasons at the position of roughly the last hundred years. Brian McCann and Jarrod Saltalamacchia are off the market and the remaining free agents are from hunger. Unless Chris Sale is dealt, they will have a difficult time liberating any of the best veteran backstops or catching prospects, and such a deal would set them back in so many other ways it's probably not worth it. Remember, very few players develop into a Sale-like talent, so getting anything like equal return is always going to be a long shot. That said, they are so poor at the position that even acquiring someone else's third catcher, such as the Rays' Jose Lobaton, would be an upgrade. What would be more ideal is if they could swing a deal for a lower-echelon catching prospect who is blocked, say the Yankees' J.R. Murphy or the Giants' Andrew Susac, who could grow into a quality regular. Those teams could name a high price, but likely one short of Sale, and given the near total absence of promising position players in the White Sox' system (I like Marcus Semien probably more than I should, and after him there ain't much) the White Sox have to do something to get this team moving again. Jose Abreu and Avisail Garcia seem like steps in the right direction (both are unproven), but there is so much further to go.

Rumors out of the first day of the winter meetings had the Indians talking to Grant Balfour about taking over their ninth-inning chores, but that's really a minor consideration compared to replacing the quality innings Jimenez and Kazmir gave the team in the second half. That the Indians preferred not to retain them is completely understandable given how unpredictable each has been, but given limited funds, spending on a closer at the expense of the rotation is indefensible. Shorthand for a longer argument: The average team throws about 1,450 innings. On average, starting pitchers take about two thirds of them, or roughly 950 innings. That leaves 500 innings to be pitched by the bullpen. The 28 pitchers who saved 20 or more games this year averaged about 64 innings pitched, or just 13 percent of bullpen innings and less than 5 percent of team innings overall. Whatever the marginal difference in cost between a good starter and all but the very best relievers — and whether Grant Balfour will be that in his late 30s is unknown — is probably going to be money well spent.

Grant Balfour (Dave Reginek)

Having signed Joe Nathan, swapped Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler, and dealt Doug Fister to the Nationals for ... for ... Well, never mind. The point is, the Tigers say they don't expect to be adding a great deal to their payroll, so banish from your mind thoughts of Shin-Soo Choo or Multimillion Matt Kemp playing left field in the Motor City. The incumbent, Andy Dirks, is a career .278/.333/.418 hitter against right-handed pitching. Put that together with a decent glove for a corner-man and you have a good complementary player. This is not an area of bleeding need crying out for an upgrade, but this is the Tigers, and we can either talk about left field, catcher (where Alex Avila would probably be just fine if/when he can stay healthy for more than five minutes), or bench strength. The relocation of Nick Castellanos from left field to third base with Miguel Cabrera moving across the diamond to first should do great things for the defense, and all that was left was finding a platoon partner for Dirks, this year's Tuiasosopo-level fringe free agent. The Tigers did a good job identifying that player when they signed 33-year-old free agent Rajai Davis to a two-year contact. A right-handed hitter, Davis doesn't hit same-side pitching well enough to play every day (.255/.297/.353 career), but as a .294/.354/.425 career hitter against lefties with 50-stolen base speed and good defense, he should be quite valuable — so long as Brad Ausmus doesn't fall in love with his speed and start expanding his role.

Rajai Davis (Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports)

It has been 23 years since Frank White last roamed the infield for the Royals. His old team has tried veterans, they've tried young players, and they've tried Chris Getz, who was either both or neither, take your pick. If you're going to hit .248/.305/.295 you'd better play defense like a Bill Mazeroski 33 played on 45. Now Getz is gone, having been non-tendered, and late-season acquisition Emilio Bonifacio remains. Bonifacio played quite well as a Royal (.285/.352/.348, 16 steals in 42 games), but the likelihood is he's going to regress closer to his career numbers (.262/.322/.340), which is better than Getz, but that's damning him with extremely faint praise. The trick for the Royals is always how to do things on the cheap. With the club distinctly in win-now mode, this is a no-brainer position to try to upgrade. However, first Dayton Moore has to decide what he wants, something he hasn't done in all his years with the team -- unless Getz really was his ideal. The post-Cano free agents are depressing, so we are left waiting to see if Moore dealt the only pitcher he cared to spend in acquiring Norichika Aoki (who, troublingly, he and Ned Yost consider a leadoff man).

This may seem like a cop-out, but the Twins aren't going to do the things they need to do, exactly, so they mostly need time for their crop of good prospects, the Byron Buxtons, Miguel Sanos, and Alex Meyers, to get to the bigs so they can assess how close they are. At that point, perhaps they'll pull the trigger on some outside talent to push them back into contention, but it's clear that they are unlikely to leap a moment before. Until then, they're going to just try to kill the clock. The 2013 Twins struck out 6.1 batters per nine innings against a league average of 7.7: That is the second-largest gap of all time. The only team in history to get fewer swings and misses was the 1911 St. Louis Browns, a team playing a very different style of baseball than they practice now. Signing Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes, career mediocrities who get the odd swing-and-miss, is a gesture towards the problem, but realistically, the Twins still have a rotation of fours and fives in search of a one and two. On Monday, general manager Terry Ryan was heard to say, "We need to learn to win again." No, the Twins need to have a sense of competitiveness and urgency again.

Phil Hughes (Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sport)