Here's what I would do

[NUpolo8]

Here’s what I’d like to see. You give Manny a three-year deal with a mutual option for a 4th year. You eat half of Juan Pierre’s salary and trade him. (Believe it or not, he still has value.) You play Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, and Andruw Jones sits on the bench (or at home) quietly earning the rest of his $36 million. You re-sign Rafael Furcal for a year or three (thanking God that his agent isn’t Boras). You put Blake DeWitt at second (I don’t understand all the talk about moving him back to third), you watch Casey Blake go right back to Cleveland, and you move Russell Martin to third before he becomes completely worthless. You find a decent catcher who has a couple years left, and you stock the farm system with catching prospects that might be ready for the bigs in two years. (Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to still have Dioner Navarro or Carlos Santana?) Assuming Brad Penny and Derek Lowe are gone, you’re left with Chad Billingsley, Hiroki Kuroda, and Clayton Kershaw. You add one more veteran to the rotation (Sabathia? Ben Sheets?) and give someone like James McDonald an opportunity to be the fifth. Assuming Takashi Saito is done, you give Jonathan Broxton one more shot at being the closer.

 

No need to thank me, Ned.

 

 

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