GM Warboss74 #1: The Setup

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a blog post for this site. I’m hoping this will be a start to a lasting blog series after my attempt at preseason projections fell apart due to my computer crapping out. In this series, I plan to layout my plan as GM of the Milwaukee Brewers much like I addressed in my Life after Prince series last offseason, but this series isn’t meant to be just a glorified rosterbating session. There are plenty of different tools and resources I use that may only get a passing mention in my discussions in the forum, and I’d like to use this series to help introduce or further explain them through the lens of my plan as GM. In addition to those aspects, I also have to follow along and adjust to what Doug Melvin actually does. Many of you know I wanted to move Hart and Ramirez at the deadline because I thought we could get a very good return for both players. The Hunter Pence trade clearly shot that plan down and thus I have to readjust it. I hope I’ve defined the series and it’s direction well enough for everyone. Now on to the bread and butter.

The first thing to look at when laying out a plan or direction, in my mind, is to determine what the financial constraints are for the next season and beyond. The Brewers entered the 2012 season with a record setting payroll of roughly $98 M. I doubt Attanasio let’s Melvin go that high entering the 2013 season. To get a good estimate of the Opening Day budget, let’s take a 5-4-3-2-1 weighted average for the last 5 seasons. ($98 M, $83.5 M, $90.5 M, $80 M, $81 M) The 2013 Opening Day budget then comes to roughly $89 M.

Next we have to get an idea of what the budget will look like over the next 5 seasons. To do this, I’m just going to assume a 5% per year increase from 2013 to 2017. (5.2% average increase per year from 2008-2012) This leaves our budgets at $89 M, $93.5 M, $98 M, $103 M, and $108 M over the next 5 seasons.

Now let’s look at who’s currently on the 40 man roster that we have control of for at least next season whether that be for arbitration, pre-arb, or under contract. (the pre-arb and arb estimates assume they spend all year, every year in the big leagues)

*-Out of Options for 2013
**-Options available for 2013, but can’t be sent down without permission.
***-Includes Wolf’s $1.5 buyout
****-Could be $42.75 if my reading of Ramirez’ contract is incorrect.

Next let’s look at other 40-man roster decisions that may have to be made to protect a player from the Rule V draft or to secure a minor league FA from leaving. I’m not including anyone over the age of 26 in 2013 or players below AA for those eligible for minor league FA. I included all Rule V eligible players because there is a AAA portion of the draft where players below AA can be drafted to play on a team’s AAA roster.

Now that we’ve finally established our budget constraints, both now and in the future, and the potential decisions that need to be made in-house for the 40-man roster in 2013, I can start the discussion on my plan as GM of your Milwaukee Brewers, but I’ll leave that for the next installment as the tables have made this one long enough. I would like to thank Cots MLB Contracts for the service time and salaries of the players, and I would like to thank Brewerfan.net for the Rule V, MiLB FA, and the player option information.

Until next time!