Write your own “If I were Eppler!”

Time to get involved!

By H. T. Ennis Nov 20, 2018, 11:38am PST

Seattle Mariners v Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

THE GUIDELINES

You’ve read the staff’s choices. Now it’s time for you!

In order to rosterbate responsibly, guidelines for the series are as follows.

For the luxury tax payroll, the $145 million calculated by Cot’s contracts is the amount of present obligations for the 2019 season (use the Tax Tracker tab). Cot’s is chosen as it is the most reliable, publicly available source.

The luxury tax threshold, which owner Arte Moreno has indicated as the spending limit in years past, is $206 million for 2019, leaving almost $61 million to be played with. Or does it? Read Rahul’s post here to see how he came up with the $28.5M number that we all try to stick to for these scenarios.

As for proposed offseason moves, MLB Trade Rumors’ free-agent predictions and FanGraphs’ crowdsourced contract estimatesare to be used as baselines for any free-agent signings.

Trades must be as realistic as possible. One popular tactic among baseball fans on the internet is offering a bunch of players you don’t like in exchange for some you do. In reality, that’s not how trades actually work, so that’s off limits.

Finally, if an arbitration-eligible player is to be involved in a transaction, MLB TR’s arbitration projections are to be used to calculate the player’s luxury tax implications since final arbitration numbers are not yet in.

Got it? Let’s go.

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[Insert your name]’s Offseason Plan

My offseason priorities

First we...

Starting Pitcher #1 - xxxx

2 years, $32 million [$16M AAV]

Second Base - xxxx

2019 estimated arbitration salary $8.9M (2 more years of control)

Trade Proposal: xxxxx

Offseason in review

In any case, here are the team’s depth charts.

Projected lineup vs. RHP (debatable):

Bench:

Starting rotation (debatable):

Bullpen:

Summary