Friends:
It took a little bit for all the puzzle pieces to move into the right places, but we appear to have a time we all can connect for the Free Agent Draft:
Saturday morning, April 2, 9 – 11 AM.
I want to thank you all for going the extra mile to make this possible. Someone somewhere along the way who originally couldn’t make that time arranged things so they could (maybe it was Ryan?), and then Jamie Johnson stepped forward and did something similar so he could meet then, too.
I understand Tom plans to join us in person. I wonder if some of us who can might assemble an hour early for a pastry – and – fruit breakfast so we can have some time just to catch up with Tom. Who’d be able to do that?
We promise not to conduct any league business or start the draft early, for those of you who can’t be there at 8 am – this would be a social gathering. (Although, under the First Amendment, we couldn’t prohibit trade talk…)
I will send the final free agent list to Dave this weekend, who will squeeze it onto the website. This will give everyone a whopping 4 weeks to study up. We should have the most surgical, efficient, awesome Free Agent Draft ever.
(We cut things off on March 1 so the free agents created in March can enrich the end of April draft.)
There’s an awful lot of EFL money still unspent. Adding in my head it comes to $204,000,000 chasing a maximum of 52 players. Here’s the list of teams and spots left to fill (salaries are listed with the last three digits truncated):
Pittsburgh Alleghenys — Players:19 Spent:46,750 Rem:40,750
Kaline Drive — Players:20 Spent:50,750 Rem:36,750
Peshastin Pears — Players:22 Spent:55,250 Rem:32,250
Flint Hill Tornadoes — Players:25 Spent:55,750 Rem:31,750
Portland Rosebuds — Players:26 Spent:56,250 Rem:31,250
D.C. Balk — Players:29 Spent:62,000 Rem:25,500
Haviland Dragons — Players:24 Spent:62,750 Rem:24,750
Old Detroit Wolverines — Players:26 Spent:64,500 Rem:23,000
Canberra Kangaroos — Players:28 Spent:74,250 Rem:13,250
Cottage Cheese — Players:29 Spent:78,500 Rem:9,000
You’re probably thinking, “Aha! Those Balk — I see what they’re up to with their one remaining roster spot and all that money. They are going to draft Giancarlo Stanton!”
Silly you. Stanton costs a minimum of $26,541,667 over the next 12 years. The Balk would need to free up $1,250,000 to bid that kind of money. They can’t drop anyone. I suppose they could sell someone… but, no the Balk are not the ones to look out for.
If the Wolverines can dump JJ Hardy somewhere, along with his salary, they’d have the dough. They need an OF, Stanton’s an OF, Stanton never got to win a championship with the Wolverines so he has unfinished business, he’d add almost 6 WAR to the W’s offense…