Build your Phillies offseason!

We all love being an armchair GM. It’s what drives sports radio, it’s what gets us through the endless slog of the offseason, it’s the reason we keep re-playing OOTP over and over and over. The Phillies this year present a unique challenge as they have several big decisions to make with a roster that is clearly in “win now!” mode, but doesn’t look like it’ll possess the financial wherewithal to make it all happen. There are a lot of holes and not that much money to fill them with.

So what would you do?

We want you to create a FanPost where you share with us your ideal offseason for the Phillies. What free agents are you targeting? Are there trade partners you see the Phillies matching up with? What prospects are you dangling to get a return that’ll boost the champsionship odds in Philadelphia?

However, we want to make this realistic. It’s very easy to say that they should sign J.T. Realmuto, George Springer and Trevor Bauer, but in reality that will not happen. There has to be a budget in place that your imaginary owner will not let you cross, be it the luxury tax threshold or a hard line in the books that is still millions short. So, let’s lay out the ground rules:

1. Decisions have already been made on several players, so we’re not going to bother with whether you would pick up options on guys.
2. You can’t rescind qualifying offers, nor can you retroactively offer one.
3. You have to stay under, or even with, the given budget. Not a penny more.
4. Make your trades realistic. The Dodgers aren’t giving you Gavin Lux for Jean Segura, so don’t bother.

So what should your FanPost look like? Go with this:

[insert your name]’s 2020-21 Phillies offseason plan

Your budget

$180 million

Last year, according to Spotrac, the Phillies ended the season with a payroll of $203,911,573. That number ain’t happening in 2021. The owner and team president have already stated that the payroll will drop. Without them saying how much, we’re going to have to estimate, so let’s go with that number. It could go either way, but it seems like a reasonable drop in money that leaves wiggle room for them if fans are allowed back in the parks and they can get those revenue streams flowing again.

Arbitration

MLBTR provides the arbitration estimates that we’ll need and since it was a wacky year, we’re going with Method 3 of the model. You need to tell if you are offering arbitration or if you are non-tendering these players:

• Seranthony Dominguez – $900K
• Zach Eflin – $3.7MM
• Rhys Hoskins – $3.4MM
• Andrew Knapp – $1.0MM
• Hector Neris – $5.3MM
• Vince Velasquez – $4.0MM
• Heath Hembree – $1.8MM

Free agents

Again, MLBTR has provided you with a list of all the free agents you can possibly think of. If you want to go searching for them elsewhere, go right ahead.

Trades

This is the fun part, I know. This is where you have to tell us what trades you are going to make and why. Give your rationale for why the Phillies would do it and why the opposing team would also do it. Like I said before, please don’t make these outlandish proposals that you know aren’t going to happen in the real world. A team like the Pirates, though rebuilding, are going to value team control when they shop their players. Someone like Joe Musgrove has a few years of team control left, so they value you appropriately. Make your trades also valuing as such.

The roster

The team is going to have 26 players next year and if 2020 is any indication, Joe Girardi likes to have a 13 man bullpen at his disposal. So build your roster the same way. Give the players you would put on the Opening Day roster and their salaries for 2021 only, assuming that pre-arb players are going to make $563,500 next year.

SP1:
SP2:
SP3:
SP4:
SP5:
RP:
RP:
RP:
RP:
RP:
RP:
RP:
RP:
C:
1B:
2B:
SS:
3B:
LF:
CF:
RF:
Bench:
Bench:
Bench:
Bench:
Bench:

Since there is no indication that an agreement about a National League DH is close, we’re going to operate this exercise as if there is none.

Summary

Give a summary of your team. How do you think it would fare? Are there strengths? Weaknesses? Sell us on your plan and why it’s the best one for the Phillies moving forward.

One more thing - make it a FanPost. The comments are turned off here.