The Phillies are the National League champions. As Jacob mentioned earlier, this obviously means that the Dodgers are not and that they're facing a pretty good amount of uncertainty this winter with a lot of players, namely Manny Ramirez, Rafael Furcal, and Casey Blake all facing free agency at the end of this season. Without Furcal and Ramirez, the Dodgers don't even win the 84 games that they won in 2008 and there's a good chance they miss the playoffs. That begs and important question: was the spending spree that General Manager Ned Colletti went on at the trade deadline to acquire Ramirez and Blake worth it?For Blake, the Dodgers traded minor league reliever Jonathon Meloan and minor league catcher Carlos Santana to the Indians. For Ramirez, they traded Andy LaRoche and minor league pitcher Bryan Morris to the Pirates as part of the three-way trade that involved Jason Bay. That's four pretty decent prospects for two months of Ramirez, who was awesome, and two months of Blake, who was not.
I suppose the first question is whether or not just making the playoffs is enough. The Dodgers probably could've given the Diamondbacks, who fell apart down the stretch, a run for their money with someone much less talented than Manny Ramirez. Still, that's a futile line of reasoning. The Dodgers won the division with Manny Ramirez and they beat the Cubs because Casey Blake enabled them to not have to start Angel Berroa or Jeff Kent at second base. Still, four prospects for four months that didn't result in even a pennant?
