Unless we can put together a Colorado Rockie-esque 2007 winning streak, we have moved into the unfortunate "Take Stock, Move Inventory, and Reload" phase of the 2008 season.

I have seen a lot of chatter on this site about trading for sluggers to improve the offense in 2009 (Matt LaPorta is my favorite of these, but perhaps more of a 2010 fix), but there has not been, or I have missed, any discussion about what I think might be the most pressing need of the 2009 season and beyond: a dominant closer.

Looking at the first 84 games of this year, we have converted 14 of 27 save opportunities.   If we had a decent closer (assume an 80% save rate), we would have already won 8 more games this year, and would find ourselves 4 games out of first. 

In all fairness, Borowski does have an 80% career save rate, and he has not been given many opportunites to save games in the past month.  However, it appears his age is finally getting the better of him as his ERA and arm have begun to give out.

So what's the arm-chair GM move to make ?  Go for a closer or go for a bat?  Or just go for value and hope for the best?

My dream scenario is to get both by trading CC plus a reliever to Milwaukee for:

 AA Matt LaPorta: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?n=Matt%20LaPorta&pos=RF&sid=t559&t=p_pbp&pid=453181 

AAA Luis Pena: http://www.nashvillesounds.com/clubhouse/Default.asp?playerId=204

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the next few weeks.