One thing I forgot to mention last season, was the death of the owner. Arte has been replaced by Eric from Fargo. Eric is a bit more about the money. He doesn't want anything more than a winning record, but by 2031, he wants the payroll down to $160m...
...in the 2029 season, our payroll was $232.3m...
It's an interesting change of direction, and actually isn't timed too badly. This offseason saw the departures of
Corbin Burnes ($25m), and
Shane Bieber ($21.3m). As a result of the ownership change, I didn't extend
Terrin Vavra ($23.5m). He was good for us, 4 All-Star appearances and a Silver Slugger award from his 6 seasons in L.A., but I didn't think he was justifying his price tag, and now that money is a factor, he's off.
Josh Jung ($7.8m) is also gone. He didn't have a good year, and got traded to the Nats for a pair of relievers.
He was allowed to go as I wanted to get this guy in:
Younger, cheaper, and hopefully, better.
All told, the payroll has been reduced to $174.9m as of opening day. With our three most veteran bats (
Perez, Delgado, Trout) (~$74m) potentially all in their last season, getting down to $160m shouldn't be too tough...though we'll see what that does to our performances...