Hindsight GMing

Just for mierda and giggles... Let's say that the Lerners decided to open up their wallets, deciding that a payroll similar to last year's level would be appropriate. Further, they've dusted off the H.G. Wells-era time machine they've kept in the basement of Wheaton Plaza, and are allowing you to travel back to December with all the info you know now. Further suppose that you have absolute power of persuasion and that any player you select (not named Bonds!) would come play for you for the same salary they eventually accepted. (Lots of suppositions, huh?)

Here's the list of Free Agents signed over the offseason. You've got $30 million to spend or not spend. Who, if anyone, would you have signed? And who would you have left off the Nats roster?

I'll be working on my answers...

Alright, here's what I'd do...

$1.75 for Ryan Klesko to replace Robert Fick

$.85 for Damien Easley (or Aaron Boone) to replace Tony Batista

$6 for Kenny Lofton to replace Ryan Langerhans and to platoon with Logan in CF

$1 for Jorge Sosa to replace Jerome Williams
$10 for Greg Maddux (or Tom Glavine) to replace Jason Simontacchi

All of those guys, save for Easley, have played for Stan Kasten before.

That's a total of about $20 million, and none of those are long-term contracts. (The players we're giving up are about $2 million).

Would this team win more?

I'm using Runs Created as a proxy for offense and prorating it to give them an approximate % of Nats playing time.

Klesko to this point has been worth 10 more runs than Fick, given Fick's playing time.

For Easley, I summed up Josh Wilson's and Tony Batista's playing time and prorated Easley's performance. So far, he's been worth 6 runs (about half a win) more than they were.

For Lofton in Center, I had to tweak it a bit. I took Logan's, Casto's and Langerhan's stats and assigned Lofton 2/3 of the playing time to account for the platoon. (Church would've started the season in LF, negating Casto had Lofton been signed)

With Lofton, that position would have produced about 21 runs. Without him, just 15, so Lofton has added another 6 runs, or half a win.

It's harder to do a direct pitcher comparison, but if you sum up the starting performances of our backups: Bowie, Williams, Simontacchi and Bacsik, they gave up about 90 runs in 140 innings.

Sosa and Maddux have combined for about 56 runs in 130 innings.

So there's about a 30-35-run difference in performance, which is about three total wins. (of course, there's some added bonus to the relievers not having to strain so much, but i ain't calculatin' that!)

So for a net of about $18 million, we could have about 5 more wins and be 33-32.

Of course that's all hindsight. Nobody was calling on the team to sign Jorge Sosa, and we all mostly thought that Fick was a good idea.

It's not a perfect science. And this doesn't prove anything. But it's fun to think about.