Quote:
Originally Posted by progen
I'll trade you a first round pick for the Unknown player. Kinda like the Unknown Comic from the Gong Show. lol
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I'd give him (her?) to you for free, that 1st round pick's gonna end up asking for double my budget as a signing bonus!
Now that I've got my bearings with the roster, it's time to do the following:
- Fill out my staff
- Tender contracts to players in arbitration
- Offer extensions to minor league players on expiring contracts
First of all, the staff. Jonathan Janes managed our team last year. He was a 42 year old rookie manager, and, considering the rumors about his poor attendance, I'm going to fire him. I think I know just the man I want to replace him. Dustin Malone came out of the bullpen from 1948-1966 for Chicago, Buffalo, San Diego, Dallas and Detroit, recording 259 saves and an ERA of 2.98. He's the proud owner of 7 CL Reliever of the Year Awards, 7 All Star Game appearances and 4 Picknell Series Trophies. He now lives at home in Greenville, Michigan, where he's expressed interest in becoming a manager.
I flew over to Detroit to meet Dustin at a restaurant. We talked for a few hours. First, the typical "how are the wife and kids doing", and then the conversation went right to baseball. Malone is 43 now, around the usual age a guy starts his managerial career. He says he'll use conventional strategies, meaning no overuse of smallball, no batting the pitcher 8th, and no screaming at players. If we reached an agreement, he said he'd plan to hit the youngest hitters possible and throw out the youngest pitchers my roster allowed him to. He also said I could take control of pitching assignments and lineups if need be. I offered Malone a 3 year, $75K contract on the spot. Cool dude
I've also decided that we'll be bringing in a new Pitching Coach, Hitting Coach and Scouting Director for next season. My Pitching Coach of choice was Luis Dominguez, a 50 year old who started his GLB coaching career with the New York Hawks a decade ago. He has a good reputation around the league and excels in developing groundball pitchers, which he'll see a lot of Fresno. I chose former 3B Helespontico Lopez to be my Hitting Coach. He started coaching hitting in 1954 with Dallas, and after he was let go in 1963, he decided to take a 7 year hiatus. Hopefully he chooses us as the team he wants to make his comeback with. He prefers to teach hitting with an all-around approach, rather than focusing on perfecting one tool. I selected the best scout out there to join me in finding players that will win us a championship, a 63 year old New Yorker who previously worked for San Diego named Nate Derrough.
SP Cody Hurley, SP Martin Lopez, RP Matt Nickey and RP Jason Springer are our arbitration eligible players this offseason. All 4 of them contacted me requesting to be non-tendered and released into free agency. Their wishes were fulfilled. We now have 4 pitchers left on the active roster... Looks like we have some spots to fill!