Reinviting a Franchise

The franchise currently known as the New York Crime Spree has a pretty strong history of futlity. In six seasons there have been three owners and nothing but last place finishes in the AL North, including last season's infamous 16-win campaign after being abandoned. However, things aren't really that bad.

The truth is that this franchise was primed for a rebuilding season, and this is mostly due to the good development work of chazzzzzz, who ran the club as the Minneapolis Lakers for four seasons.

There were only three contracts of note heading into S6:
34 year-old All-Star closer John Suzuki, 4.8M
34 year-old SP Charles Pratt, 9M
34 year-old RP Phil Upshaw, 7.3M

totalling 21M, not a problem to pay for a franchise with much youth. But we didn't see enough big league ready talent to attempt to compete this season, so we moved all of the above contracts, as well as 28 year-old, arbitration-eligible RP Charlie Junge, and 22 year-old, good glove, soft stick CF Joe Brown for the following prospects:

1B Randy Sutton, 25
3B Tony Rosa, 20
1B/DH Kelvin West, 23
P Max Martin, 20

The above players were targeted partly because of their ETA of late Season 6 to early S8, which coincides beautifully with some of the other prospects already in the organization(thanks, chazz):
DH/C Chad Decker, 26
CF Howard Dunn, 25
RF Junior Berkman, 25
SP Pedro Crespo, 24
SP Tony Pena, 22
3B Stewart Coles, 22
C Eric Brooks, 25
SP Don Adcock, 24
2B Mathew Rice, 21
CF Abraham Hill, 22
SP Joshua Burkett, 21
CL Jaret Wickman, 25
SP Allen Christenson, 20

In addition, after the 16-win campaign of S5, New York was granted the 1st pick in the Rule 5 draft, as well as 1st dibs on waiver pickups. Between these two, we are currently carrying ten Rule 5 players on our roster, seven that we drafted on our own:

2B Oscar Maduro, 22
SS Ben Quinn, 24
C/DH Dave Sullivan, 27
P Thomas Lofton, 26
RP Albert Perez, 22
RP Cam Corino, 23
P Joe Thompson, 22

and three Rule 5 players that we nabbed off the waiver wire:

RP Terry Strong, 22
2B/LF Brandon Clifton, 24
RF Jim Woods, 22

Also, we signed as a free agent last season's 12th overall draft pick, Bill Hill, a UMass graduate who did not come to terms with Pittsburgh.

All told, there are maybe a half-dozen players in the entire organization over the age of 28, and none older than 30. Only two players in the organization are making more than 500K, the aforementioned Hill(3.5M for the next 5 years) and 26 year-old arbitration winner R.A. Dorsey(1.5M).

So, in short, the future looks bright in New York, though it may take a more Herculean effort to overtake the long dominant Sioux Fall Six Guns and always competitive Cleveland Dobys.