With yet another power bat becoming unavailable to the Dodgers — Vernon Wells gone with a 7-year, $126-million-dollar extension from the Blue Jays — the likely targets are continuing to shrink. For curiosity’s sake, let’s have some fun with stats and see if we can identify useful names.
Let’s look at the Top 25 in On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging Percentage (OPS) at outfielder and third base since those are the two likely positions the Dodgers could make room for. In this post, I’ll cover outfielders.
Choosing the number 25 arbitrarily will cut off a few potential folks, but should get most of the ones worth looking at.
Top 25 OF by OPS, 2006 season
N/A = probably Not Available for whatever reason, which will help us narrow things down immediately.
| 1. | Manny Ramirez | BOS | 1.058 | What’s the Magic 8-Ball reply? “Ask again later.” |
| 2. | Jermaine Dye | CWS | 1.006 | The White Sox just exercised their club option for 2007. |
| 3. | Carlos Beltran | NYM | .982 | N/A |
| 4. | Matt Holliday | COL | .973 | N/A |
| 5. | Vladimir Guerrero | ANA | .934 | N/A |
| 6. | Jason Bay | PIT | .928 | N/A |
| 7. | Alfonso Soriano | CHC | .911 | N/A |
| 8. | Grady Sizemore | CLE | .907 | N/A |
| 9. | Vernon Wells | TOR | .899 | N/A |
| 10. | Brad Hawpe | COL | .898 | N/A |
| 11. | Carlos Lee | HOU | .895 | N/A |
| 12. | Andruw Jones | ATL | .894 | Expensive, free agent after 2007, Boras client. |
| 13. | J.D. Drew | BOS | .891 | N/A |
| 14. | Pat Burrell | PHI | .890 | Phillies wanted to get rid of his big no-trade contract, but might be stuck with him now. |
| 15. | Bobby Abreu | NYY | .886 | N/A |
| 16. | Raul Ibanez | SEA | .869 | I doubt Mariners want to part with him. |
| 17. | Reed Johnson | TOR | .869 | Reportedly will be platooning in LF this year. |
| 18. | Michael Cuddyer | MIN | .867 | N/A |
| 19. | Gary Matthews Jr. | ANA | .866 | N/A |
| 20. | Nick Swisher | OAK | .864 | Even if he is available, what price would he be? |
| 21. | Adam Dunn | CIN | .855 | Dunn’s name comes up often. So do his strike outs. And his lack of defense. |
| 22. | Josh Willingham | FLA | .852 | Doubtful. |
| 23. | Johnny Damon | NYY | .841 | N/A |
| 24. | Mike Cameron | SD | .837 | N/A |
| 25. | Jacque Jones | CHC | .833 | Juan Pierre with power and no speed? |
So, between the unavailable ones and the ones we don’t want or need, there aren’t exactly a lot of stellar options here. Jermaine Dye would be very intriguing, but it may be that he is unavailable by rule due to the White Sox exercising their option recently — I wasn’t able to determine that for sure. He is from California, albeit Northern.
Input from commenters is welcome. Any outfielders I missed? Anybody on this list that shouldn’t be N/A?
Next post, the third basemen.
[...] Power bats for the Dodgers: The Outfielders [...]
[...] Looking at the list from the top, a lot of the names have already been covered in my previous couple of power bat posts (outfielders and third basemen), but I figured I’d go back and browse for other possibilities. [...]