Bombshell
Manny Ramirez
Suspended fifty games – wow.
Better start tweeting.

Agent’s Two-Step
“Blame it on the meds
From that doctor,” says Boras.
“That always fools ‘em.”

Torre’s Lament
Hitting three-fifty
OBP-ing five hundred.
Get me Juan Pierre.

Manny Ramirez, reportedly, has drawn a line in the sand. He wants $25MM in 2009 with a player option for $20MM in 2010, none of it deferred, and he won’t accept a penny less.

The Dodgers, meanwhile, are reportedly ready to start decreasing their offer to Ramirez, to bring it more in line with his actual market value. They’ve realised, finally, there’s no point in bidding against themselves.

Who’ll blink first?

The danger for the Dodgers is that the team will get off to a slow start and the fans’ clamoring for Ramirez will become such a distraction that it will torpedo the season.

The danger for Ramirez is that the Dodgers will get off to a fast start and he’ll end up sitting on the sideline all season long, or have to settle for significantly less money than he was originally offered.

There’s also this: if Ramirez sits out long enough, the Dodgers might decide to wait to trade for an impact bat instead of forking over millions of dollars for an aging left fielder with a history of erratic behavior and absolutely no defensive value.

That’s what I’d do.

Now, one of the advantages of signing Ramirez is that you don’t have to forfeit a draft pick. But with the economy tanking it’s increasingly likely that a slew of teams will be looking to move expensive contracts. The Dodgers, if they don’t sign Ramirez, could be in a position to take on one or more expensive players, and their willingness to do so will probably mean the cost in terms of young talent will be very low.

Who’s going to be available this summer? Baseball Prospectus projects the White Sox will finish in last place. If they’re far behind in June or July you can bet Jermaine Dye will be traded. He’s got a mutual-option for 2010 that likely won’t be picked up by the team.

The Astros are projected to finish in fifth place in the six-team NL Central and are acting like a team with serious financial concerns. Could Lance “Big Puma” Berkman be available midseason? He’s signed through 2010 with a $15MM club option for 2011. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a fraction of what Ramirez is demanding. And Berkman is a far more versatile fielder than Manny.

The Padres will trade Brian Giles before the end of the year. Meanwhile, another bad start for the Tigers and Magglio Ordonez will likely be sent packing.

If the Rays can’t keep up with the Red Sox and Yankees then Carl Crawford could be on the move. Billy Beane’s done a lot of good work in Oakland, but if the A’s struggle Matt Holliday is a goner. Then there are the Cardinals, who might decide to trade Rick Ankiel even if they’re playing well. Gotta make room for Colby Rasmus somehow.

In other words, there will be plenty of trade options.

Beane says the first half of the season is for figuring out what you need and getting it. The Dodgers have three months to get a good idea of their strengths and weaknesses. They could rush into signing Ramirez before the end of spring training, but I think it would be a lot smarter to wait.

It’s exactly one week before Barack Obama is sworn in as president of the United States and here at Umpbump we’ve decided to mark the occasion with a series of Obamicons, which we created at Paste Magazine’s Obama.Me site.

Each day we’ll post a different Obamicon, featuring one of our favorite baseball personalities. Today, we’re featuring Manny Ramirez, who faked a knee injury in an attempt to pressure the Red Sox to trade him — all so he could become a free agent after the 2008 season, rather than wait two years and make $40MM in the meantime.

So far, Manny hasn’t found a team willing to sign a 36-year-old traitor with negative defensive value to a longterm contract. But he’ll get the big bucks eventually, right?

It’s been widely reported that the Nationals might make a run at free agent IB Mark Teixiera, but here’s a little something that Buster Olney threw out at the bottom of his latest column (Insider required):

Each offseason move impacts others that will follow, but with that in mind, here’s a guesstimate as to where the top free agents will land:

Sabathia: Yankees

Teixeira: Angels

Burnett: Yankees

Manny Ramirez: Nationals

Manny to the Nationals? I know this is just speculation on Olney’s part, but oh dear God please let it come to pass. Talk about a punishment fitting the crime. If Manny is destined to get a big contract, at least let him land somewhere where the pitching is thin and the smog is thick. I don’t want to see that traitor playing in October ever again.

I’ve been wanting to write about the playoffs, but I’m a little overstimulated by the prospect of a Phillies-Rays World Series. So I’m just going to throw some thoughts against the virtual wall and see what sticks.

• Last night, after the Rays emphatic victory over the Sox, Peter Gammons asked Tampa left fielder Carl Crawford how he felt about the win. And Crawford went through the usual scripted response, ending with something like, “and hopefully we can win one more and play in the World Series.” The look on his face when he said the words “World Series” was priceless — like he never said it out loud before. He was giggling.
• Inquirer columnist Bob Ford was wrong, and he’s not afraid to admit it. He says he shouldn’t have bashed Pat Gillick for signing Joe Blanton, Scott Eyre and Matt Stairs. Who’s going to be the next columnist to apologize? How about you, Jim Salisbury?
• Before this season started, whenever I would talk about the Rays’ loaded farm system, someone would remind me about Boston’s glut of young talent, most notably Jed Lowrie, Clay Buchholz and Jacoby Ellsbury, and about New York’s young guns Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, as well as Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera. But all of a sudden Buchholz is unable to pitch with men on base and Ellsbury’s a shadow of his 2007 playoff self, while Hughes and Kennedy are constantly hurt or getting shelled. Cano, for his part, got off to a terrible start in 2008 and didn’t improve defensively, while Cabrera got demoted. I’m not saying that Boston or New York should give up on any of these guys. But if you’re a Yankees or Red Sox fan, and you’re watching the Rays kick ass this week, it’s probably hard to feel excited about your team’s youth movement.
• Bad sign for the Dodgers: Scott Boras is already talking about Manny Ramirez’s free agent negotiations.

My buddy Dan left me a message on my Facebook wall yesterday. It read, “yo man… Sox/Phils World Series, here we come!” It was Dan’s way of congratulating me on the Phillies eliminating the Brewers. But on a deeper, subconscious level, I think Dan, a Red Sox fan, was voicing his sincere support for the Phillies. I’m guessing most Red Sox fans dread the possibility of a Dodgers-Red Sox World Series. And for good reason.

Here’s the nightmare scenario: The Dodgers wrap up the World Series with a dramatic Game 7 win at Fenway. Manny Ramirez hits the game winning home run off an exhausted Jonathan Papelbon in the bottom of the ninth, then trots around the bases, dreadlocks flopping everywhere — Sox fans too shocked to even boo.

Nobody in Boston wants that. That’s why they’ll be rooting for the Phillies in the NLCS. And, on behalf of Philly fans everywhere, let me say, Boston, we welcome your support. Rooting against the Dodgers is something we can all do together.

Even Manny Ramirez thinks Albert Pujols should be the NL MVP.

The Dodgers left fielder says he voted for Pujols for player of the year in Players Choice Awards voting and says, “Someone who was only here for two months doesn’t deserve it. It should go to someone who played the six months of the season.”

Moreover, Ramirez said he has resigned himself to the reality that he might never win an MVP award.

“I’ve played 16 years, I’ve been a pretty good player and I’ve never won it,” he said. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll go on with my life.”

Now, I don’t want to rip Manny, who seems to be taking a very mature attitude towards his MVP candidacy, or lack thereof. But I couldn’t help thinking that Ramirez probably would be a leading MVP candidate if only he hadn’t forced his way out of Boston.

This season, Manny has 34 HR and 112 RBI to go with a .330 batting average and an otherworldly .425 OBP. The problem, of course, is that voters don’t know what to do with a player who has spent time on two different teams, let alone two different leagues (Shannon Stewart split the 2003 season between the Twins and Blue Jays and ended up fourth in MVP voting, despite amazingly underwhelming stats).

Manny had 20 HR, 68 RBI, a .299 batting average and a .398 OBP when he left Boston. If he had kept up that pace he would’ve finished with 32 homers and 110 RBI. That projection takes for granted that Ramirez’s August and September explosion has been entirely a result of his moving to the Dodgers. But even 32 homers and 110 RBI would probably have been enough to win the AL MVP.

Consider the current front-runners: former teammate Dustin Pedroia has put up less impressive numbers in every major category except batting average (.326), and Twins first baseman Justin Morneau has a higher batting average and more RBI, but fewer home runs (23) and a lower OBP (.383). If Ramirez only managed to keep up his pre-trade pace, he would have finished the year with 114 runs created. Pedroia currently has 114 runs created and Morneau has 111 (not that many sports writers care).

Morneau would have been Ramirez’s toughest competition (Morneau and “projected Manny” have nearly identical slugging percentage and OPS+) and Ramirez would have had a number of things working in his favor. First, Ramirez’s team has a better record, while playing in a much tougher division. We know the Red Sox will make the playoffs, and if the season ended today the Twins would not. Second, Ramirez plays for a big market team and, like it or not, big market guys get more attention and therefore more votes. Finally, Manny would have been the sentimental favorite. He’s a Hall of Fame player who has never won an MVP. Morneau, on the other hand, is simply a good player who already has one MVP and probably didn’t deserve that one.

I want to emphasize that all of this speculation is based on a projection that assumes that Manny’s late season surge wouldn’t have occurred had he stayed in Boston. But I think by now it’s clear that the only thing holding Manny back in Beantown was Manny. Sure, he’s probably playing against inferior pitching in the NL West, but not that inferior. After all, how bad can a league with Lincecum, Webb, Haren, Cain and Peavy be?

No, this MVP was Manny’s to lose. He started off well, showing up to spring training this season in top shape with seemingly the right attitude. He was going to play hard and he wasn’t going to worry about his contract until after the season. And then he decided that getting to free agency was all that mattered. More important than the fans, his teammates, his reputation — and more important than winning his first MVP.