There seem to be a lot of teams that could be good fits for Dexter Fowler, probably the best outfielder (or player in general) left in free agency. Among the interested parties are the Chicago White Sox and Texas Rangers, but right now it seems more like a money thing than anything else.
Fowler has been quite productive as a centerfielder over his 8 seasons in Major League Baseball, playing for the Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros and last season, the Chicago Cubs. He played 156 games last season for the Cubs, his healthiest season to date, hitting a .250 with a .757 OPS, batting in 46 runners while hitting a career high 17 home runs, being a lead off hitter for a team that broke its playoff drought and made it to the NLCS, getting swept there by the New York Mets.
Fowler seems to have waited a bit too much for better, more attractive players to come off the board, left with options that probably don’t seem as lucrative as before. He made $9.5 million for the Cubs last season and despite his consistency over the years and being more than a month away from his 30th birthday, the interest in him isn’t translating to grandiose offers. Teams do need some hitting and power from the outfield, but the money on offer isn’t what it could have been.
One team that seems like a perfect fit for Fowler are the White Sox, which would also mean staying in the same city for Atlanta, Georgia native. The problem for the White Sox is both the contract demands of Fowler who obviously would like a long term deal, but also the draft pick they’d have to give up for him. It seems the only way they think of that as worthwhile is if Fowler takes a one-year deal at something of a discount, or they find a way to trade Adam LaRoche, who is on his final year of the contract, making $13 million.
The Rangers do have someone at centerfield, but not a very trustworthy option in Josh Hamilton. Signing Fowler could help them keep Hamilton relatively healthy and rotate players in the outfield, but like the White Sox, they don’t plan on offering too much to land Fowler. There’s always the option of the Cubs, where he played quite well in 2015, but now that they already have Jason Heyward and seemed set at pretty much every position, it’s not going to be too impressive of an offer from them, if he actually gets one.