Our chef du network, the Depressed Fan Brian, has worked his ass off yet again to launch Spring Training '09, a fabulous compendium from around the camps. Not only does it aggregate all the posts from the Blogs by Fans bloggers, it has exclusive material from people like Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors. I'll be contributing soon, once I get through a frightful shite-load of day-job work that's harshing my mellow this week and keeping me from my usual noodle-sharp analysis.
Instead, I offer this seat-of-the-pants prediction: The Giants will come closer than you think to signing Manny Ramirez. Odds are he'll re-sign with L.A., but all this "backburner" stuff feels hedged to me. My gut tells me the Giants are not just waiting and watching, they're lurking with intent. If the Dodgers make a substantial offer they'll have Manny sewn up, but I betcha it comes out after the fact that the Giants were deeper into it than anyone thought.
At the very least they're setting a floor so the Dodgers can't get away with paying him nothing. The trick is offering a high enough floor to make L.A. pay real money, low enough that it works into their short-term plans if L.A. drops out, but not so high that Boras calls their bluff and they get stuck with a contract that blows up their payroll the next few years.
