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Kind of a mini-rant. It's complicated...At this point in the offseason we got the new player salaries for 2015. Salaries are based on performance of the past 2 seasons...so players who were rookies last year are still kinda inexpensive since they only have 1 season, but good players entering their 3rd year go WAY up. This, combined with players who just had a breakout season or whatever, can put teams way over the money they have available to sign them. The penalty of winning.

I tore all my teams down pretty far last year when it was clear I wasn't going to win. I also got aggressive about extending my cheap, half-decent players. Rookies can be extended for 1 year for next to nothing, and other players can be extended at their current salary for 1 year. Multi-year extensions have a scale that goes up from there. The reason extensions are valuable is because there really isn't a salary cap. You can carry over money you didn't spend last year. And at this time each team gets a set amount added to their balance. The amount is to just get the team with the least money carried over up to the "salary floor". Extended players are already paid for. So this frees up some of that money to go after free agents. And the teams who cannot afford to re-sign all their players will have to cut some, possibly some high-priced ones.

There is a trading period going on where we can make trades before we have to decide who we are re-signing. Well, teams who might have to cut an expensive player due to salary could trade them right now and at least get a cheap prospect for them. If they wait and just cut them, they get nothing. There are some teams that are WAY over, and will likely have to cut players like Kershaw, Trout, Cueto, A-Gonz, etc...Well, I float a trade offer of a prospect or two for one of these guys, and they laugh at me. Then I tell them, well, I'll just sit back and see who you cut then, and sign them then and keep my prospects...We'll see if they blink. In other words, my trade offer is not Mark Appel for Cueto...it's more like Mark Appel plus I pay Cueto's salary in return for Cueto. If they simply cut Cueto, then yeah, they free up the same amount of money as trading him, but they get no prospects doing that. Oh well...

One team was loaded with money and prospects, and I also have Abreu, Adams and Tanaka all already signed through 2016. I may regret this later, but I am trying to convert all this money and prospects and "win now". These are the trades I made:
Traded Addison Russell for Pablo Sandoval
Traded Matt Kemp for Max Scherzer
Traded Carlos Correa for Shin-Soo Choo

There just are not many good 3B's people are willing to trade. I paid a steep price to fill that hole, but it needed to be done. Then someone offered me Scherzer for Kemp. Kemp's salary is cheap right now, so perhaps he has more "value" than Scherzer, but now I have a bona-fide ace. Losing Kemp put me in need of an OF. So I dipped back into my prospect pool to trade Correa for Choo.

In this league, young players have their most value for their first 2 years, 3 if you can afford to extend them early enough. So you have to look at it as "I traded 2-3 years of Correa for 2 years of Choo". Choo is cheap right now, coming off a down year. So I can extend him for next year cheap, too. This overlaps with my "win now" years. Too bad, but Correa wasn't quite ready. Scary, but I didn't even empty the farm yet! I still have: Kyle Schwarber, Blake Swihart, Luke Weaver, Domingo Santana, Rymer Liriano, Courtney Hawkins...Possible trade chips at the deadline, or I could just keep them.

This team still has a ton of money left to sign free agents, too. I really only have 5 holes to fill (I need 1 more OF, 1 SP, 2 RP, and 1 utility bench guy). I still have $21 mil to spend. In this league, an "average" everyday MLB player ranges from $2 mil to $3 mil. Star players are around $4 mil and up (from Matt Holliday at $4 mil to Mike Trout at $8 mil)....So do the math...It depends on what free agents became "unaffordable" to teams. I should be able to land 1 or 2 more star players, maybe more.

As for my other 3 teams...I had 1 other team that had a ton of money, but just not anywhere as deep of a farm system as the one above. I did manage to trade a couple prospects to fill a couple holes, but I'll be relying more on free agents with that team. That team will be improved, but they are probably another year away from really contending.

Then my other two teams have a roster of really good prospects, but a lot less money. And unfortuantely, people were just not as willing to trade for prospects in those leagues. The flip side is that these two teams were better to begin with, and had fewer holes. They are in a position to maybe sign 1 more star player and fill out the rest with average players and at least be pretty good...All my teams should be improved over last year, but that team in the post above has a chance to make a serious run.

I got Holliday in the redistribution draft for my one team. This lineup is pretty, um, heavy. It includes Matt Adams, Pablo Sandoval, Jose Abreu, Matt Holliday, and Shin-Soo Choo. Good thing errors are the only defensive stat that matters. On the mound I also have Lance Lynn, Max Scherzer, Fernando Rodney...

My best team on paper is in the toughest division, and the toughest conference of any of my other teams. They are 2 games over .500 and have lost tons of games that would have been wins against more average competition. My 2nd best team is in 1st place by 6 games, but their competition is way weaker.

The team that I've been struggling to rebuild for 2 years just made a couple blockbuster trades. I gave up Schwarber, Wong and Vincent Valasquez and got Carlos Correa and Jonathan Papelbon. I then signed Rougned Odor off waivers to fill my open 2B slot....I really had no plans to keep Papelbon since I already had closers on that team. So I flipped Papelbon and Odor for Robinson Cano. Cano is having a disappointing season but he's been hitting better in the last month or so. I don't care about this season anyway. I'm hoping for a more normal season from him next year. His salary will be cheaper next year, too, since his production is down.

Sorry, I'm having too much fun with this.

The team that just got Cano and Correa a few weeks ago has gone 17-4 in their last 21 games and is suddenly 3 games out of first. All 4 teams in that division are over .500 and are all clustered within 3 games of each other. The stretch run should be fun.

Then the team that I still feel is my best on paper is finally catching some breaks. They are 15-5 in their last 20 games, and are just 2 games back. And this is while Miggy Cabrera has been on the DL.

One of my teams clinched their division. Two others are mathematically alive but will not win. The last team just won their 6th in a row to pull within 2 games with 12 games left on the fantasy schedule. The next 3 games are vs the team they are chasing. Fun.

1 game back with 8 games to play...3 are against the team I'm chasing.

All 6 of my teams suck this year. Two of them I took over last year and expected them to suck. They are still rebuilding, and actually did improve to a lower level of suckage. The other 4 though....so frustrating. One team was 10 games over .500 at one point then had a 12-24 stretch. One team was relying on Keuchel and Abreu to be good and that didn't happen. The others are just injuries and regression.

Today is the trade deadline. Someone tried trading me Jon Lester for Alex Bregman, Greg Bird and Luke Weaver. Must think I'm dumb...I'm not even sure I'd just do Lester for Weaver straight up....not because Weaver will be better, but because Weaver costs nothing right now and Lester has a very high salary. I might try to sell some more pieces....

The only minor leaguers you can sign in this league are players on any 40 man roster at the start of the season and 1st round draft picks every June. Otherwise, they can't be signed until they've appeared in an MLB game. So international signings are never available until they appear in an MLB game. This is a long way of saying that Alex Reyes just became available to sign this week. I'm hoping to get him even though my pick is in the middle of the pack in all my leagues. We'll see how close everyone has been paying attention.

What happens if you have player X who gets traded and essentially plays a second game #100? Do you get all his stats from both games for that game #?