I'm not going to mention his name in this post, but it's time to start seriously thinking about him not being with the team in 2009.
With things turning ugly between the agent and the owner, and the owner and the player, and the player and the general manager, and the general manager and the agent, it's time to really consider some other free agent options.
There has been a lot of talk about the Dodgers taking the money they were allocating to one specific person and spending it on three or four different players.
For starters, it sounds like Randy Wolf will be a Dodger soon enough, so he was probably going to be in the equation to begin with. So really what people are getting at is Los Angeles taking the remaining $35 mil or so in the budget and spending it on two or three more guys after Wolf, instead of spending the rest on one guy.
Of course, the most likely outfield candidate is Adam Dunn. Dunn supplies a lot of pop, a good amount of RBI, a lot of strikeouts, a low average and bad defense. He is also not very clutch throughout his career in the month of September.
He bats just .221 in his career in September compared to .251 in every other month. He slugs just .417 in September compared to .665 in every other month and his OPS is just .778 compared to 1.052 for every other month. He also averages just five home runs and 15 RBI per September.
With all that said, he's still a better option than Juan Pierre.
There are also discussions of signing Orlando Hudson, which doesn't make sense to me. I was an advocate of that move before bringing back Casey Blake, but now I am not. If you sign Hudson, you give up your No. 17 pick to the Diamondbacks. That wouldn't have been so bad if they would have nabbed a supplemental pick by letting Blake go.
You also stunt the development of Blake DeWitt, who could have played third base by had Blake left. I really like Hudson, but I am not sure it's the right move at this point. No need to start signing people because plan A failed.
So Dunn, Wolf and Hudson would probably cost you about $27-30 mil annually, leaving about $5-8 mil in the budget. If the Dodgers signed a fourth, they could really shore up the pitching by bringing in Braden Looper or go after a reliever like Dennys Reyes or Will Ohman.
It's good to know there are other options out there and the Dodgers will make moves to improve the ballclub, one way or the other.
I feel like we gotta have Manny. We better end up with Dunn AND another guy if we don't bring back our guy.