This Year’s Jermaine Dye

With only a few weeks remaining until pitchers and catchers report to camp and local media outlets pretend that truck day is ‘a thing’, there are still a handful of big name players left on without a job for 2012. Of those, the likes of Roy Oswalt and Edwin Jackson will eventually find themselves a big league deal somewhere, even if the dollar value and team don’t match their early winter ambitions. Others available players, particularly relievers, who hoped for a nice deal from someone may end up settling for a minor league deal or split contract on a team in need of bullpen help. I’d throw names like Chad Durbin, Mike Gonzalez and Juan Cruz into this category. But what of the bigger name position players still looking to catch on somewhere? In the winter of 2009-10 Jermaine Dye was coming off of a .250/.340/.453 year where he hit 27 homers for the Chicago White Sox. The assumption was that Dye was looking for a bigger payday than team’s were willing to offer and, finding his optio...