Some things to think about

First of all, I don't think the combination of Elijah Dukes/Jesus Flores hitting the DL is the reason for Dunn's sudden sputtering. It's not like he could keep up his 1.100 OPS pace all year. This is baseball, and you can't blame every slump on something. Even the best of the best fail between 6 and 7 times out of 10.

Concerning Nick Johnson-I agree with FJB wholeheartedly. Don't. Overpay. For. Relief. Pitching. Yeah, our bullpen sucks. But in both our 2009 plan (the plan in which our infield doesn't get 4000 throwing errors due to Dunn at 1B) and our long-term plan (Delcarmen is arbitration-eligible after this season and will hit FA after 2012), the deal wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. Trading him for a reliever is the last thing we should do-get some high risk, potentially high reward prospects for him (or fleece somebody out of some low risk, high reward prospects) and do with that. It's really not worth it for us to try and make a "patch" when there is no feasible way for us to compete in 2009.

And nobody wants Danny Almonte, just like in 2006 when nobody wanted Jeffrey Maier. I'd tend to think it would be worth the publicity stunt come the 40th round or so, but I could be wrong.