With Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon signing on Friday, the last of the really big names fell off the free agent board. Really, it’s all slim pickings now. If your team is still shopping, below is a list of what’s left on the shelf of any consequence.
The official free agent list is much longer. For our purposes I’m not including the relievers, because most of them are pretty fungible. I also didn’t include guys who didn’t play in 2010, players who are more likely to retire than play in 2011 and the truly, truly wretched. If you think I left off an intriguing player who could be really useful to someone please let me know, but these are the guys who actually seem like genuine working ballplayers.
Starters
Jeremy Bonderman
Justin Duchscherer
Kevin Millwood
Freddy Garcia
John Maine
Todd Wellemeyer
Infielders/DH
Willy Aybar
Ronnie Belliard
Russell Branyan
Orlando Cabrera
Jorge Cantu
Pedro Feliz
Troy Glaus
Nick Johnson
Casey Kotchman
Bobby Crosby
Eric Chavez
David Eckstein
Felipe Lopez
Mike Sweeney
Outfielders/DH
Ryan Church
Vlad Guerrero
Jose Guillen
Lastings Milledge
Scott Podsednik
Randy Winn
I think it’s safe to say that there’s no one here who is going to alter the balance of power in a division race. Justin Duchscherer could turn in a great season if everything breaks right with his health. A couple of the DH types could be really useful (How Russell Branyan doesn’t have a job as a DH/backup 1B is beyond me).
At this point of the winter, I think it’s safe to say that your team is not likely to get substantially better barring a trade.