Covey’s Burner (Rudy’s) Offseason Fever Dream

6:14 PM CDT on October 22, 2019

PREAMBLE

Existence is pain. Life is meaningless. Let's descend into the dark void. We all know that $120 million is not a real payroll for this franchise. I think a hard $90 million cap* is more reasonable. People don’t follow MLB teams to watch competitive baseball or good players they like. People follow baseball to marvel at the shrewd business dealings that can maximize profits for shareholders. Embrace the doom! God forbid we pay those greedy players!

*$90 million is not a hard cap known to the fans. It is merely the hard cap the front office has in place that will be instilled after we “sit at the table for our top free agents”

When this thing is inevitably riddled with errors, blame literally anyone other than me. I take no responsibility for anything written below (unless you like it, in which all of your praise can be bestowed upon me).

ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE PLAYERS

Alex Colomé, $10.3M - Tender
Yolmer Sánchez, $6.2M - Nontender
James McCann, $4.9M - Tender
Carlos Rodon, $4.5M - nontender
- This is only partially because he had a stupid gender reveal. It's mostly because he's spent almost the entirety of his career either A) hurt or B) not good.
Leury García, $4M - Tender
- He's cheaper than Yolmer and can cover SS and CF.
Evan Marshall, $1.3M - Tender
Josh Osich, $1M – Tender (why not)
Ryan Goins, $900K - nontender

CLUB OPTIONS

Welington Castillo: $8 million/$500,000 buyout

OTHER IMPENDING FREE AGENTS

Jose Abreu (made $16M in 2019) - All the cool kids are signing him for 2 years for $30 million, so I'll do that.
Iván Nova (made $9,166,167 in 2019) - Let go
Jon Jay (made $4M in 2019) - Let go
Hector Santiago (made $2M in 2019 on split contract) - let go

FREE AGENTS

If my math is right, I have just shy of $60 million in payroll, which gives me right around $30 million to play with after striking out on the big boys.

No. 1 strikeout: Gerrit Cole (3 years $75 million) Despite being nowhere close to the 7 year, $230 million contract Cole actually received, we believe that our 3 year $74 million dollar contract was more than fair and in many ways, a better deal for Gerrit. You can’t be signing pitchers to long term deals. I’ts poor business decisions. We had a seat at the table and ultimately that is all you can really ask for as a front office or especially, as a fan. We let this drag out so long and really felt we had a real chance at him, so don’t expect any big name pithcers as they’re already signed.

No. 2 strikeout: Anthony Rendon (6 years $180 million) - Anthony Rendon is 3 years older than Machado was last year and not as good, so it stands to reason we will offer him fewer years for slightly less AAV. After all, we can’t be committed to someone for too long of a deal! God forbid we pay someone above their production level later in their career to make up for it. This offer was more than fair, and honestly we’re insulted Rendon signed with the Rangers instead of us for $265 million. Oh also we let this shit drag waayyyyy out, so there’s like no one left for us to get.

Actual FA. 1: Logan Forsythe (1 year $2 million) - Welp, Yolmer’s gone and we need someone to play second base and he looked sorta good for all of one month last year, so we believe he can find that one month of being good for the whole year and we’ll sign him for one year to prove it!

Actual FA. 2: Hunter Pence (2 years $15 million) We really like what we saw out of Pence last year. Sure he’s 36 years old, but age ain’t nothing but a number. Which is why we’re penning him to a 2 year, $15 million deal. You might think no team would be dumb enough to give a 36 year old who was actively bad as recently as two years ago this deal, but this is the same morons who gave a 35 year old DH only player with a bad back a 2 year $25 million dollar deal and we don’t learn lessons! Pence will primarily DH for us when he’s not frequently on the DL, as we will be trading for our RF.

Actual FA. 3: Matt Wieters (1 years $1.5 million) I really wanted to bring in a total no fun Dbag, like Brian McCann to really straighten out this clubhouse and yell at Tim Anderson for having fun, but alas, he retired. I’ll have to make due with following the proud White Sox tradition of finding a player who can neither catch, nor hit, to be our catcher. Plus he has the added bonus of constantly being hurt, which means we can overwork James McCann again!

Actual FA. 4: Eric Thames (3 years $18 million) This is actually a useful player that I like, but we’re going to sign him to a stupid money deal to be primarily a platoon DH/1B. I think allocating $14 million in salary to the DH position in the form of an old and not particularly good platoon is an incredibly dumb way to spend money, so let’s go with that.

Actual FA. 5: Kyle Gibson (3 years $27 million) I’m pretty sure he’s terrible and we shouldn’t be giving him this much money which is exactly why I think we’ll sign someone dumb like him and give him this much money.

Sign several of Homer Bailey, Clay Bucholz, Trevor Cahill, Edwin Jackson, etc. (whichever are available) to spring training on league deals because we’re definitely relying on one to two of these guys to pitch significant innings for us.

TRADES

Propose trades that you think sound reasonable for both sides, and the rationale behind them.

No. 1: Trade Jonathan Stiever to Rangers for Nomar Mazara. I told you I was going to trade for an every day right fielder and surprise! I picked the dumbest one and made the dumbest trade I could! Let’s just say Mazara makes like $4.5 in arbitration because I’m too lazy to look up if that’s a good number or not.

Summary

I’ve added two DH to platoon (and block Zack Collins), a real starting pitcher, some fake starters we’re gonna milk for the nothing they got left in the tank, a catcher and a second basemen and I traded for Nomar Mazara because we are “going for it” just like 2016!

ROSTER & BUDGET

I’ll cut Jose Rodon and Cordell, and some other bums if any of those bad starters make the team to get to 26 players on the roster. The amount of money spent should be just shy of $90 million at like $89.86 mil.

Projected Opening Day Lineup:

Nomar Mazara – RF
Yoan Moncada – 3B
Jose Abreu – 1B
Hunter Pence – DH
Eloy Jimenez – LF
Tim Anderson – SS
Adam Engel – CF
James McCann – C
Logan Forsythe – 2B

Bench: Eric Thames, Matt Wieters, Daniel Palka, Danny Mendick

Logan Forsythe is not keeping the spot warm for Nick Madrigal. We need to make sure we have as much control as possible, so we will try to keep him down all year.

Projected Opening Day Starting Rotation: