Meanwhile, they lost Lowe with no adequate replacement, and people forget that this team with Lowe and without Manny was at .500 when he was acquired from Boston. Lowe was worth 5 wins in 2008, so basically Manny replaces Lowe’s production on the team. And the team was .500 with Lowe until Manny joined the team.

To put Manny’s 2008 season in perspective, his career BABIP is .339 and his BABIP for 2005-2007 was around .320, but he bumped up his BABIP in 2008 to .370. The last time he had a BABIP that high was in 2002 when he only played in 120 games, 518 PA, when it was .373. That was approximately the BABIP he had from 1997 to 2002, when he was 25-30 years old. It is highly unlikely that at 37 he suddenly figured out how to hit so much better consistently at an older age. He will be more like the Manny of 2004-2007: still a very good hitter, still one of the best in the majors, but not the offensive (and defensive) dynamo they caught in a bottle late in the 2008 season, and not worth the money he’s being paid, at least according to Fangraph’s calculations.

They actually had a losing record his first month, 13-16, before they had their nice run in September, going 17-8, to finish 30-24 with Manny. That’s like a 90 win season.

However, it wasn’t all him leading to that record. Even with Lowe’s great ERA, the team was only 19-15 with him starting, but he also greatly helped out the last two months, with a 2.27 ERA, 6-2 record, which could have been easily 8-2 with some better support offensively. So he was also significantly responsible for the Dodger’s success during those two months. Thus the loss of Lowe is a huge blow to the Dodger’s efforts, unreplaced by anyone, plus Manny will be a notch or two below what he did for LA in 2008, pushing them into the low-to-mid 80′s win area. That’s a recipe for roughly .500.

So the Dodgers are a middling team, in a division of middling teams. Injuries and unexpected good performances will be the determinants of who win in the NL Worst in 2009.

How does he continuously get teams to bid against themselves?

Who else was lining up to give Manny 20M+ per year?

It’s interesting, though. His RngR+ErrR/150 as a Red Sock was -1 from 2002 to 2004, -25 from 2005 to 2007, then -5 in a small sample size last year. What to make of this is anybody’s guess because -3, +4, -5, -23, -27, -26, -5 does not compute at any age at any stadium.

On the other hand, I think by this point the fans have soured a bit on him because of the contract negotiations. A few days ago in the LA Times they had a (meaningless) poll about whether the Dodgers should offer him more money, and most people voted that the Dodgers should offer LESS money. That’s very different than the public opinion of the negotiations two months ago. Meaning the fans aren’t so happy about Boras’ and Manny’s antics in the deal room. Obviously the overall economy has got to affect the fans’ opinions as well.

In any case, I think it is too bad that the Dodgers didn’t come back with a lower offer, just to see what would happen. Who else is going to sign Manny? Almost no other team has even expressed interest.

I am a Twins fan and I remember last year how everybody annoited the Tigers to win our division. Baseball can be a funny game. I would not at all be surprised if someone other than the Dodgers wins the division.