1957 Off Season
Joe McClain got a nice arbitration bump, $42K. Relievers Phil Clark and Ron Mrozinski got decent little raises too.
We extend McClain for 7 years at $40K. We're going to blow this thing up and build around he and Bud Black.
Time to dump some salary and truly enter a rebuilding phase, the current way aint working. We have a couple of decent starting arms in the minors so we're going to look to move Burdette & Simmons, Greengrass too.
The Yankees offer us $46,000 for Simmoms & minor league pitcher Fritz Ackley, we take it.
We move Greengrass to the Indians for a 6 player package that includes two decent SP prospects, Wynn Hawkins & Gordon Seyfried and a semi decent C prospect Earl Averill. Nothing studly but we've got to start rebuilding the system and it knocks Greengrasses salary off the books.
Burdette goes to the Giants for 19 year old SP prospect Jim O'Toole. He's a very good prospect but a long ways off.
C Smoky Burgess wants an extension far beyond what I think he deserves so since he's in the last year of his contract I move him to the Red Sox for decent 2B prospect Chuck Schilling.
We add C Clint Courtney from the Browns in a minor deal since we're gonna need one of those.
We deal a couple of minor league pitchers for Reds LF Rip Repulski who actually looks decent, much better than what we're giving up.
We sign Gale Wade to a 5 year extension, we extend Monte Irvin for 3 years at $51K, cutting his salary by $30K which will be a bargain if he stays healthy.
Once we're done we have a lot of money to put into our scouting/farm system/medical, and should continue for a couple of years.
Aaron & 1B Willie McCovey are probably our best prospects and we have a pretty deep system at the lower levels so we're hunkered in for a years of low expectations.
Our staff is Black, McClain, Herriage, rookie Bob Conley and veteran Bill Miller, it could honestly go either way, health will be a big key. Our pen should be solid.
Our lineup is a far cry from the good old days. Outside of Irvin & Adcock we really have very little pop or talent for that matter.
We'll have to look at moving Irvin & Adcock at some point in the next couple of years but I don't want to completely kill my lineup just yet and I've pared enough salary for now.