The 2019-20 Amazin’ Avenue Offseason Plan Contest (AAOP)

With the World Series (mercifully) in the rear view mirror, it’s once again time for the Amazin’ Avenue Offseason Plan contest, best known in these parts as the AAOP. If you’re new here, the concept is simple; pretend you’re the general manager of the Mets and craft a plan for the offseason. A panel of staff will read through the plans, select a group of finalists, and then present them to the community for a final vote.

Please note that if you haven’t signed up for a username on the site, you’ll need to do so more than 24 hours before the contest ends, as there is a 24-hour waiting period before a new user can post on the site.

Rules and Guidelines

1. Submit your entry as a FanPost. The title must begin with “AAOP:” (no quotes) so that we can distinguish entries from other FanPosts.
2. The deadline for submitting your AAOP via FanPost is 5:00 PM EST on Sunday, November 10. No exceptions.
3. There are no specific requirements in terms of length or content, but try to balance brevity and readability with detailed explanations of your master plan.
4. Total 2020 payroll can’t exceed $185 million, give or take ~$5 million. The same goes for future years, so don’t propose ridiculously backloaded deals as a method of skirting the cap.
5. For arbitration-eligible players, use these contract values from MLB Trade Rumors.
6. Use this spreadsheet from Cot’s Contracts for current and future payroll obligations. Note that David Wright’s $12 million does NOT count against the cap for the purposes of this exercise. Yoenis Cespedes’s $29.5 million, however, does count.
7. For a list of available free agents, use this list from MLB Trade Rumors.
8. Remember that as of 2020, MLB rosters will expand to 26 players, 13 of whom must be position players. Make sure you account for this rule change in your plan.
9. The league minimum for 2020 has not yet been set, so we’ll use $575,000 for the purposes of this exercise.
10. Your AAOP begins at the start of the Mets’ offseason, so you are free to ignore any decisions the Mets have already made since the season ended.
11. Make your submission as readable as possible. Use spell-check, proofread your post, and try to make it sound good. If we have to slog through reading your plan, we probably won’t like it too much.
12. Same goes for making your post look good. Sprinkle in some images, tables, and of course some Paintz (MS Paint for the uninitiated). Fun aesthetics are a great way to make your plan stand out and keep the judges interested while reading it.
13. Make your plan as realistic as possible. No one is coughing up a top of the rotation starter in exchange for David Peterson. Whether the Mets might realistically execute your plan isn’t important, but the moves do need to be at least somewhat justifiable.

And here are the prizes this year:

First place: Art of Words Shea Stadium print

Second place: Your choice of one Mets-related t-shirt from BreakingT

Third place: A signed copy of Shea Stadium Remembered: The Mets, the Jets, and Beatlemania

All entries are subject to the official rules, found here.