Back to a 2nd team
After a year away from running a 2nd club, I'm going back in again. This time, I'm going to take over the Portland Stags in a parallel storyline. heading into their 30th season, the Stags were once an expansion success story, but the last few years ownership changed and they've stopped spending and developing in-house talent. they've made 12 playof f appearances in franchise history, won the NL pennant in 2044 before losing to the Angels in the World Series (then Anaheim, now Vancouver) but won the World Series in 2038 (NL) and 2051 (AL) and since then have struggled to gain a foothold, their last postseason appearance was in 2055.
i'm going to take them over as well, but the difference is, I'm only allowed to spend (for now) just 4.4% of the top team's payroll. We'll see what it's likely to develop players, make trades and arbitrage our way to a semblance of respectability knowing the team is at the bottom of the barrel. While I could obviously just go overseas and bring guys over, that'll only be allowed in years when the owner lets us spend more and I have a spreadsheet for this. Right now, the owner is cutting $35.8 million from our books and our team budget was set to $44 million for next year according to our sheet. It means I can't acquire anyone that costs money, we'll likely just trade anyone and go radically down for prospects and see where that lands us.
Luckily, my league has a vibrant pipeline of Latin American players who actually enter the draft, part of why St. Louis was good from the jump was two draft picks from the DR who were immediately able to join the lineup. Not sure if the next drafts will have anyone that useful, but I'm saying that this won't be quite as dire a situation as a real life in-game rebuild because I have lots of talent pathways around the world at my disposal, so long as I acquire them when they're cheap and trade them before they hit arbitration.
We'll see how long I can run with that parallel story line, but getting the run the Cardinals how I want should make it a bit easier.
For the Stags, the house rules will be much simpler:
- Cannot ever have a team payroll over 5% of the highest payroll in MLB
- Cannot sign or trade for a player with an OVR over 60
- Players 39+ in age are exempt
The idea here is mostly to see how well I can develop guys over the course of a storyline, something I've done in online leagues but not much in solo leagues because I don't usually run storylines like this for myself and keep track. I'm curious in my league that has so many players in international leagues, whether there's an arbitrage opportunity among those > 60 OVR players (I don't play with scouts, so ratings I see are accurate) and if it's possible with good defense, and targeting a particular kind of talent whether you can build a team that's more successful than they should be.
Because of the lack of other restrictions, I can throw the kitchen sink at different strategies and types of players to see how this plays out and it lends itself to playing fast, since we're gonna suck.
Here's what some Stags bloggers think of our current predicament
Quote:
Look, we all knew the Stags' ownership change was going to bring pain, but $44 million? That's not a budget, that's a dare.
Let's break down exactly what Portland's looking at here, because the numbers are wild. They've got $55.1M already on the books for 2062, which means they're going to have to shed at least $11M just to hit their mandated ceiling. That's before we even talk about trying to add any talent.
The most pressing issues:
Jaxson Tiller is about to get expensive. Like, really expensive. We're talking about a 23-year-old who just popped 39 homers, and his arbitration estimates start at $7.3M in 2064 and climb to $10.3M. In a normal world, you'd be extending this guy yesterday. In Portland's new reality? He's probably their best trade chip.
The League Minimum Legion: The Stags are carrying 21 guys at $900K, which sounds great until you look at their arb projections. Troy Goggans jumps to $4.6M in 2064, Marc McCoy to $5M, and Mel Johnson eventually hits $5M by 2066. Even Matías Santana, their 18-year-old prospect, projects to cost $7.5M by 2067.
The 2065 Nightmare: If they stood pat (they won't), their payroll would hit $94M in 2065. That's more than double their budget. The front office probably breaks out in cold sweats just looking at that number.
Here's what's fascinating: Portland actually has some interesting young talent. Goggans showed real promise, McCoy had 179 hits, and Yago Gonzalez (.313 BA) can clearly play. But they're going to have to get creative - and by creative, I mean "trade everyone before they get expensive."
The model here might be the early 2000s Cleveland teams who mastered the art of trading players two years before free agency, or the Tampa Bay approach of the 2020s where no one was untouchable if the price was right. But even those teams had more financial flexibility than these Stags.
The good news? Latin American talent still enters the draft in this league, which means Portland could theoretically find MLB-ready talent without the usual development costs. The bad news? Everyone else can too, and they can actually afford to keep those players.
We're about to watch one of the most fascinating experiments in recent baseball history. Can a team compete while spending less than 5% of what the big boys do? Can you build a winner when you have to treat arbitration like a death sentence?
The really wild part? Portland's done this before - kind of. They won it all in 2038 and 2051, made the Series in 2044. But that was with a real budget. This? This is like trying to build a house with popsicle sticks and hoping nobody notices it's not made of wood.
Get your popcorn ready. Whether this works or fails spectacularly, it's going to be one hell of a show.
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