ESPN's Jayson Stark asked five GMs to assemble the best possible 25-man roster from the free agents who signed this winter. There was a $2 million limit per player, and here's the catch -- the entire team couldn't cost more than $30 million.
One of the participants (who are all anonymous, but you get the impression one or two may be from the AL East) wanted to spend less than $20 million for 24 players and sign Pudge Rodriguez, but that was against the rules.
"You know what?" said one of our GMs. "I bet you'd have a better shot at .500 doing it this way than Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee or Tampa Bay."
Stark has packed a lot of other miscellaneous rumblings into this column, including the first known mention of 'Eric Hinske' and 'Gold Glove' in the same sentence. His conclusion about the free agent exercise is concise and accurate:
Whether it was legal, illegal, collusive or non-collusive, teams did an astonishing job this winter of driving down prices of many useful, productive middle-market players.
So what could $30 MM buy in this depressed market? The consensus:
1B: Brad Fullmer ($1 million)
2B: Mark Loretta ($1.25 million)
SS: Mike Bordick ($1 million)
3B: Jose Hernandez ($1 million)
LF: Ron Gant ($350,000)
CF: Kenny Lofton (still unsigned)
RF: Reggie Sanders ($1 million)
C: (platoon) Joe Girardi ($725,000) and Greg Myers ($800,000)
DH: David Ortiz ($1.25 million)
Starting rotation: Kenny Rogers (still unsigned), Chuck Finley (still unsigned), Rick Helling ($1 million), John Thomson ($1.3 million), Jeff Suppan ($1 million)
Bullpen: Roberto Hernandez ($600,000), Rick White ($750,000), Steve Reed ($600,000), Juan Acevedo ($600,000), Tom Gordon ($1.4 million), Kerry Ligtenberg ($1.2 million), Jesse Orosco ($800,000)
Bench: Brian Daubach ($400,000), Ramon Martinez ($800,000), John Vander Wal ($750,000)
Getting the best available SS, the best lefty-hitting C, a 200+ IP starter and Frank Catalanotto for the money you would have had to pay Jose Cruz Jr. seems like pretty smart shopping. It's always fun to play games like this one, especially when the reality of MLB is heading steadily toward this fantasy. As one of the GMs pointed out, you could sign all these guys to one year deals, then next winter, simply do it again with different players.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20030301035638999