LOS ANGELES -- Andrew Friedman had been on the job less than a week when somebody lobbed the question at him that his predecessor had been unhappily dealing with for the previous eight months: what to do with the surplus of outfielders?

“I’ve been asked that question as if it’s a problem. If it is, it’s a tremendous problem to have,” Friedman said. “There are a lot of really talented players who happen to play the outfield here. We have to look through it and figure out what roster puts us in the position to have the most success next year.”

It may not be a problem for either Ned Colletti’s regime or Friedman’s -- depth is one of the Holy Grails in baseball -- but it was a problem for Andre Ethier, who barely played in the second half, and for manager Don Mattingly, who said repeatedly he wasn’t crazy about the headaches of keeping the benched players from grumbling.

Plus, it’s getting more crowded, with younger players bumping their heads on a set outfield. After a season in which he had a 1.017 OPS at Triple-A Albuquerque, Joc Pederson will show up at spring training with every intention of making the major league roster. The Dodgers still have Scott Van Slyke, who slugged .524. Even Alex Guerrero, once groomed as an everyday second baseman, now plays some outfield.

Oh, and one of the Dodgers’ fastest-rising prospects, Scott Schebler, who hit 28 home runs at Double-A, also plays the outfield.

Pederson has played 13 games in the Domincan winter league and is batting .260 with a home run, two doubles and a .339 on-base percentage. He also has 21 strikeouts in 50 at-bats a few months after striking out 149 times in 445 minor-league at-bats. After a slow start, he is nine for his last 30.

So, unless Friedman thins the position, the Dodgers will have six players show up at Camelback Ranch in a few months with designs on playing three positions. So, whether Friedman admits it, everyone in baseball knows he’ll be looking to move at least one outfielder between now and February if for no other reason than to save dollars he could apply to another area of the roster.

It’s safe to assume the likeliest player to be moved is Ethier, but that has been safe to assume for a while and nothing has happened. Ethier scarcely played until Mattingly decided he was the best option for Game 4 of the NLDS after seeing Yasiel Puig strike out in seven consecutive at-bats. Teams that would listen on Ethier likely would be doing so because they think a change of scenery -- and access to at-bats -- would help halt his decline. Ethier turns 33 in April, batted .249 and slugged a career-low .370 last year and is owed $56 million over the next three years.

Unless Friedman can find a gullible GM or one desperate to add a name-brand player to appease his fan base, it’s likely he would have to swallow a good chunk of Ethier’s salary -- $20 million or more -- and he could expect scant talent in return. A better option would be to trade Ethier for another aging veteran on a bad contract, say a starting pitcher or reliever. That would help ease the outfield glut and add depth to areas where the Dodgers lack it. The Dodgers might even be able to get out from under Ethier's contract entirely, never an easy maneuver.

In July, trading Matt Kemp seemed like a reasonable idea and garnered plenty of headlines, but that was before he returned to 2011 form after the All-Star break with a major-league-leading .606 slugging percentage. He also went from being a problem in the clubhouse to showing some leadership qualities. It’s amazing what a performance turnaround can do for a player’s mood. Kemp, 30, is also overpaid, with $97 million left on his contract through 2019, which makes a trade harder to construct.

Carl Crawford, 33, offers largely the same case as Kemp, having come on strong to bat .300 last year and with $62.3 million left on a deal that runs through 2017. Moving either Kemp or Crawford would be complicated and why would they want to move one of their most productive hitters? There figures to be more demand for Kemp, who seems to be improving with good health, but the Dodgers would expect a major haul of talent in return. It seems like, at some point this winter, Kemp’s name will surface in a trade rumor. It’s a yearly holiday tradition.

They might trade Van Slyke, who could probably start or play more frequently on several other teams, but that wouldn’t provide any cost savings and seems ill-advised since Crawford, Ethier and Pederson all hit left-handed. Van Slyke was the Dodgers’ best right-handed pinch hitter, the big bat off the bench, batting .333 in games he didn’t start.

If the Dodgers are as high as they say they are on Pederson -- and Mattingly has compared his swing to that of Robinson Cano and Carlos Gonzalez -- the most logical move, strangely, would be to trade Puig. All of Puig’s numbers dipped from his rookie season (especially slugging, which dipped 54 points) and the signs of immaturity again hit the Dodgers at a painful time, in the postseason. They thought the Cardinals got in his head by pitching him inside -- and hitting him once -- early in the series.

But Puig is a centerpiece of the Dodgers’ marketing efforts and probably too popular to move. He’s also young -- he won’t turn 24 until December -- and the Dodgers are intent on getting younger and more athletic. He’s a relative bargain making $6.2 million next year. The Dodgers might eventually trade Puig, but not now. It could be an issue a year from now, when a clause in Puig’s contract allows him to void it and opt for arbitration. The team’s feelings about him figure to hinge, as usual, on his performance and how he acts at the stadium and away from it.

So, the outfield situation just sits there for now, inert, the “problem” that won’t go away.