Manny Ramirez: There Is No Option Two

And with Tuesday morning's rejection of the Dodgers' third and "final final" offer, the hope of Manny Ramirez returning to the Dodgers in 2009 summarily evaporated. At least, that's where we think it's ended, though Scott Boras came out and said Tuesday night that "he expects to resume contract negotiations with Ned Colletti today."

So maybe it isn't over. Maybe it is. Maybe Manny will be a Giant next year, a disaster scenario that strikes despair in the heart of any Dodger fan, let alone Brian Sabean with his $90M payroll limit shattered. Or maybe Ramirez will come back to the Dodgers and be the otherworldly force of human nature that propelled the Dodgers into the playoffs--nay, into the NLCS--last year.

Bill Simmons over at ESPN the Rag did a surprisingly good job at summarizing the Manny dilemma, describing Ramirez as "underrated" despite his hostage taking of the Dodgers:

Forget the sheer entertainment value that comes from following Manny on a daily basis. Just look at the stats. He's three quality seasons away—90 HRs, 300 RBIs, 550 hits and a .900 OPS—from becoming the greatest righthanded hitter ever. Add those to his career numbers, and he's sitting in the top 10 in career OPS and slugging, the top three in RBIs, the top seven in homers and closing in on 3,000 hits. And no one who saw him in all his Ruthian glory with the Dodgers last summer or reach base 24 of 36 times in October can honestly say he's washed up. Say he tanked it in Boston, but only after you concede that he played 22 of 24 games for them in July and had the best offensive month of anyone on a team he was allegedly quitting on.

Whatever. The guy was created to hit baseballs. Even at 36, he can perform this task at an abnormally high level, make any decent team good and any good team great. And yet nobody wants him after his messy divorce with Boston—a divorce that, by the way, the Red Sox cannot escape without blame. Manny gave them seven quality years and two titles, and they yanked him around in Year 8. No, he didn't handle it well; I'm not sure I would have handled it well either.

So he's spent the winter sitting on the open market like a sofa on Craigslist. The Angels, who need him more than anyone, claim they're fine with Juan Rivera. Really? Juan Rivera? That's what you're telling your fans? I don't get it.

All I can tell you is this: Manny is immensely fun to watch day in and day out. He's a monster offensive force, a historic one, even. And he is exceedingly, incredibly available. He will draw fans to any ballpark, and nobody is interested. You can say it's because he's a cancer; I say it's because he's unequivocally underrated.

I am usually not much of a Simmons fan, and I did consider the fact that this may be the evil mind game of a jilted Red Sox fan trying to goad the Dodgers, or someone else, into biting into the poisonous apple just so he can laugh at the sucker team in his column for the next four to five years, should Manny revert to a clubhouse cancer and phone it in each night.

But Simmons does have a point here: Manny Ramirez is exciting as heck to watch as a player. Any fan who came to Dodger Stadium last year and saw a game pre-Manny, and compared it with a game post-Manny, would agree. I'm out there cheering for all the young guys, knowing that one day one may become a superstar as well. But it's nothing like Manny. When he stepped into the batter's box, you put down your Dodger dog, put the beer in the cup holder, and watched. And more often than not, Ramirez delivered.

So Frank and Ned can go out there and proclaim "at some point, we have to move on," but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that any other option isn't even close to being the same. Adam Dunn? Bobby Abreu? Please. That's like comparing a mini-Cooper to a Porsche. They're serviceable hitters--maybe even more attractive economical choices. But are you really going to fire up the car and get off your couch to drive to Dodger Stadium to watch Adam Dunn? And with our half-a-starting-rotation, is there anyone else?

I go to around 10 to 15 games a year regularly, but I'm lucky enough to live close to the stadium so I can make the late call on the fly. Kids already asleep, or an intriguing promotional giveaway, or a pair of tickets fall into my hand? I'm there. But without Manny? I don't know. Factoring in the $15 parking and the $12 beer this year is going to be a lot harder to justify, especially if the entertainment value is definitely at a decline from prior years.

Even as a die-hard Dodger fan, I'm not going to those borderline games if Manny isn't in the lineup. I'm watching on television, for free. And I have a feeling that there's a lot of you that are with me (both on going to fewer games, as well as more cautious about personal finances).

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So Frank and Ned can say whatever they want to in the press; it's a negotiation. "We gave him what we thought was a creative proposal." (Except for the fact that it's not the longer-term deal for which he has explicitly asked, true.) "The agent [Boras] is challenging to work with." (No shit, that's why he's an agent, you idiot.) "We've tried hard...I feel very good about the team." (Who are you kidding?)

If the Dodgers really wanted to get creative, they would have expanded the number of years from their original two-year offer, adding performance incentives to insure against lackadaisical play in the out years. Worries about Manny being Manny, or Manny pulling a hammy, are resolved. The Dodgers get a marquee player--perhaps the only one on the team--for years. Done. Easy. Get to work, Ned.

If the Dodgers front office feels cornered, this is only due to their own doing. Their rental of Ramirez last year didn't hit the payroll, but everyone was well aware that it came with the big Boras strings attached. Now that it's time to pay the piper, just like an exploding ARM rate, it's hard to cry foul that you didn't know what was coming. If the Dodgers wanted some negotiating leverage, they would have gone out and signed a CC Sabathia so that they would already have a shotgun shell in the marquee-player chamber, and wouldn't walk into February with a pitching and batting lineup grossly exposed with holes. (Remember all that blather earlier this offseason about "we may need pitching needs more than we need Manny"? Well, now we still have both sets of needs. And it's Spring Training.)

Frank McCourt has cornered himself, and the only remedy now is to open up the pocketbook, something he doesn't like to do (ask the city about the Dodger Trolley), unless it's buying multi-million dollar houses for himself, of course. All of the front office's worst tendencies--excessive parsimony, organizational complacency, public relations ineptitude--are in fine display here. Top-tier MLB teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets have already addressed most of their needs. The Dodgers still have a lot of shopping left to do.

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For most of Frank McCourt's management regime, Nomar Garciaparra has been the face of the Dodger organization. Polite, articulate, occasionally heroic (the 4+1 game, for example) and giving to the community, it was easy to root for Garciaparra despite his litany of injuries and declining defensive abilities. But now Nomar is gone. And who is going to be the face of the organization now?

The best pickup so far this offseason, Rafael Furcal, coming back from injuries? The Ed-Hardy adorned Russell Martin, coming back from a sophomore slump? James Loney, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, finally getting used to the limelight? Chad Billingsley, hoping to shake off the playoff blues? Jonathan Broxton, forced into the closer's position by default?

Any of those players might be fine. I like them all. I'll root for them. I'll stand behind them. But not like I'd root for Manny.

Just sign Manny, Colletti, and be done with this awful ice-melting-paced standoff. The deal economics may not pencil out--but hey, that's the price of getting Manny to test-drive for free for two and half months last year. Manny Ramirez is the only viable candidate who can excite the fan base and be the face of the organization for the next two to three years. And any other alternative does not come close.