For a team with a 4.58% chance to make the postseason (per Baseball Prospectus), the Dodgers sure seem to be acting like a team in contention. They acquired four veterans last week, and now may have been awarded a waiver claim on slugger Adam Dunn of the Nationals, speculates Hank Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle:
↵↵↵My speculation on who got the waiver claim, and you can call this an educated guess based on some things I heard around the league: It was the Dodgers.
↵
Dunn has a $12 million salary this season, so if the Nationals choose to let him go without compensation, the claiming team would be on the hook for the roughly $3.86 million remaining for this season. Or, Washington could try to trade Dunn to the claiming team, but the most likely option is that they will simply pull Dunn back off waivers. Schulman speculates Dunn won’t be moved:
↵↵↵I don’t think they were going to let him go on a waiver claim or deal him, unless they were wowed by what the claiming team offered them.
↵
So essentially, the Dodgers are using their lower place in the standings to block Dunn from their rivals in San Francisco and perhaps San Diego. For the Dodgers, who are six games behind the Giants for the wild card, and eight games back of the Padres for the division lead, if they can’t beat them on the field, at least they can on the waiver wire.