The 2022 SB Nation Off-season SIM Preview
Greetings, Athletics Nation.
This Sunday, November 6, will be the start of the 2022 SB Nation Off-season Simulation. The Oakland Brain Trust will once again represent the interests of the Green and Gold faithful and we have a BRILLIANT plan this time around: we’re going to trade all our bad players for good players and then trade our one good player for a GREAT player!
Easy Peasy.
What I wanted to do this year was provide an opportunity for AN to discuss what they’d like to see accomplished this off-season; both during the SIM and in the real world. Who are your keepers, who can’t you wait to say goodbye to? Who do you want to welcome into the Green and Gold? We haven’t received any team guidelines from our host, Max Rieper of Royals Review, so I’m not sure if we’ll be using hard 40 man rosters or what our payroll will be but I’ll give you the same basic principles the Brain Trust uses when we plan out our strategy.
1) Budget
Yes, even our fantasy line-up is constrained by fiscal reality. The 2022 Oakland A’s had an Opening Day payroll just over $50 million and I expect the 2023 payroll to have only a little more wiggle room. The return of revenue sharing dollars can be expected to bump the total the A’s can spend to $60/65 million. Currently, payroll sits at approximately $38 million with the largest, single allotment of money going to… you guessed it… Trevor Rosenthal and his final deferred payment of $5 Million! Most of Oakland’s roster will be making league minimum with only six players making more:
Tony Kemp ($3.9 MM)
Ramon Laureano ($3.6 MM)
Sean Murphy ($3.5 MM)
Paul Blackburn ($1.9 MM)
Austin Pruitt ($1.2 MM)
Deolis Guerra ($900K)
2) Roster
We still want to have a (semi) functional roster. If you want to trade Sean Murphy then you also need to figure out who will be the back-up Catcher to Shea Langeliers. I’ll include a link to MLBTR’s Free Agent list, updated as of 11/1/2022.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/08/2022-23-mlb-free-agents.html
That’s it.
Have fun and let your voice be heard!