Colorado Rockies: Preparing for the FanSided MLB Winter Meetings

All Colorado Rockies fans seem to have ideas on how to make this team better. Next week, the FanSided MLB Winter Meetings will be simulated and we will be working to make the Rockies better … at least through these simulated meetings between Rox Pile and FanSided’s other 29 “club owners.”

Absolutely, the Rockies need to improve their club in order to overtake the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks in order to earn the National League West title. And yes, 29 other clubs also want to make their teams better as well.

Starting on Monday morning, fellow co-expert Noah Yingling and I will be serving as Colorado’s resident Faux General Managers. We will be attempting to out-think/out-trade/out-maneuver our peers representing all 30 teams in a “simulation” of the real Winter Meetings that will take place two weeks later in Orlando.

Here are the general ground rules that all of our general managers will have to adhere to:

• Honor the 40-man roster in its current form, as of this weekend.
• Hold within 15% of last season’s opening day payroll, as reported by COTS.
• Some teams will be under more or less restrictions on their budget based on public statements made this off-season. The Marlins, for instance, are definitely going lower.
• Trades will largely target major league talent and the prospects associated with Major League deals.
• Our Commissioner will do a final sanity check on trades before approving them, but both sides need to come together first with terms.

Options have already exercised, Qualifying offers have been made (and rejected), Rule 5 decisions have been made, and coaching staffs are in place. With that in mind, we believe we have more-or-less reached a good point to do this.

The FAQ

Colorado Rockies

When is this happening?

• Start: Monday November 27 at Noon (Eastern).
• End: Wednesday, November 29 at 9 p.m. (Eastern).

What about free agents?

• We have an ‘Uber player agent’ who will arbitrate offers and choose winning clubs among the bidders.

What about somebody like Shohei Ohtani?

• As a special case, we’re going to treat him a bit differently. Bids are already being taken for his services, and a winner will be selected just prior to the official start of our event … with the announcement to be made Monday morning.

What if a real-life trade happens next week?

• The general managers involved are encouraged to debate among themselves as to whether they would like to engage in the same deal. They may already have done something different that they felt was better for their club(s) and thus may choose to reject the real deal.
• That said, we will take care to report “fake” deals as fake and real deals as real to try and not confuse the issue!

Can we extend contracts?

• You bet. They will be evaluated by “the agent” as a player might do in real life and then accepted or rejected accordingly.

How about other transactions?

• General Managers are free to DFA a player, release a player, claim a player that somebody released, announce tender/non-tender decisions, and just about anything else they feel is necessary. The only real restrictions (other than the rules above) are that they are being asked to avoid minor-leaguer-for-minor-leaguer deals.

Flurries of Activity

Faux GMs all over the FanSided MLB network have already been chatting about potential deals for the past couple of weeks, so I expect that we’re going to have a bunch of transactions to announce right away on Monday afternoon.

You can certainly play along, too. Feel free to leave your comments below about what these team reps did right, what they did wrong, and what you might have suggested instead.

This is going to be a very fun and enlightening exercise. This will be the first time we done it since 2014, and it will be good to have the participants relate their stories of deals, near deals, and non-starters.

Next: What if the Rockies traded DJ LeMaheiu to the Angels?

After all, we often talk about trades … but we seldom have to actually get somebody else to agree on one. That changes on Monday. Join us on the hot stove!