With the Winter Meetings beginning on Monday and with little else to report, let's play GM-for-a-day. These games are silly and usually completely divorced from reality, but they're fun.
Let's say the Pirates have about $35 million committed to their players next year, including arbitration payments to Craig Wilson, Kip Wells, Oliver Perez and Jody Gerut but not to Josh Fogg. Let's say you're the GM of the Pirates and you can raise the payroll to $50 million next year. That means you've got $15 million to work with, or $3 million more if you want to trade or dump Wilson or Wilson, $2 million more if you want to dump Perez, and $1 million more if you want to dump Gerut. (I'm not sure whether Humberto Cota is eligible or not; you can do what you want with him.) You also have a few prospects and young players at your disposal.
- What are your goals for 2006 and beyond?
- What free agent signings do you make? Add in whatever you think they'll cost to the payroll, and remember, be realistic. You can't get Johnny Damon for $2 million. Here is a list of free agents.
- What trades do you make? Again, you get no points for unrealistic trades, like the Andy-Marte-and-a-prospect-for-Julio-Lugo-and-Danys-Baez idea I saw on a Devil Rays blog yesterday. Consider what the other team would want.
- Bonus question, if you're feeling really ambitious: What minor league free agents do you want, and do you want to drop a player so that you can take someone in the Rule 5 draft?