GM for a Day

One of my favorite annual baseball columns comes from John Sickels, who runs a shadow draft for his beloved Twins. He keeps track of his minor league system and provides updates on regularly on how he's performing, versus what the real life team as doing.

I've decided to take this concept a step further, and play "GM of a team."

While I'd love to be Ben Cherington, the reality is that he won a World Series 2 years ago, and probably isn't going anywhere. So, instead, I'm going to pick a team that actually changed GM's this year, and I'm going to run a shadow version of the Padres.

A few ground rules:

• If a player is traded, I'm going to give myself a sort of "right to match" on a deal, assuming I have a comparable offer to make. For example, I'm going to assume that free agents will take a small increase on their pay in order to play for me. Seriously, it is San Diego. There is no better place to live.
• Budget wise, I'm going to assume a $100 million budget for the roster, and $10 million annual amateur acquisition budget. Money will roll over annually. For example, if I spend $82 million this year, I'm going to roll $18 million into next year's budget. It will also be flexible. If my team is killing it in the regular season and I need to make a deal for a reliever, I can borrow from my amateur spending budget. Etc.
• To judge success, I'm going to use WAR at the end of the year, and add it up for my team (it is basic, I know). If my team is a 97 WAR (including the assumed baseline), I'll award myself the draft pick that goes with that win total (if my team is phenomenal, I don't want to assume a higher draft pick than would be awarded, and vice versa... If I suck at this, I expect to draft higher).
• Finally, I'm going to start from the day AJ Preller was hired, meaning that I can undo moves he has made so far (there is a little bit of hind sighting involved here. But that's ok because it is only a couple months, not a long term thing).

Tomorrow, I'll unveil some organizational philosophies, but for the time being, please know this: I'm not making the Matt Kemp trade.