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[bschr682]

GM: " And its over just like that. Its hard to even really be upset about it. Twin Cities was the slightly better team on paper. On top of that it was maybe just as simple as their star players showed up and ours did not. Hard to win that way. "

Renfork: " Any plans to make changes to the pitching staff going into next season? "

GM: " Naturally there will be a few changes but nothing major at this point. Closer Jose Ordonez won the Reliever of the year award and promptly exercised his contract opt out. Can't really blame the guy. He wants to cash in on a long term deal and can probably find a suitor somewhere. Carlos Silva had his team option declined. That doesn't necessarily mean he won't be back but financially it made sense to leave that decision for later. "

Charron: " Well beyond the obvious that Daniel Pepper is gone, any other changes to the position player side of things? "

GM: "Only one real change there beyond Pepper Guy and that would be HGH becoming a free agent. 33 homeruns and nearly a .900 ops for the bargain price of 1.4 mil? I think we'd all take that. We will keep in touch with his agent and just maybe bring him back again. Some of the staff are pretty bullish on replacing Carlos Arroyo at this time. Can't blame them but his arb estimate is below the 1 mil mark so a small price to pay should a rash of injuries require bringing him back to play. "

Sullivan: " My sources have informed me that league salary cap will be raised to 120 million next season. How does this affect your offseason plans? "

GM: " Well Miss Sullivan it quite frankly doesn't affect us much at all. We have a fairly large chunk of cap space to throw around regardless of the cap raise and to be honest I'm not entirely convinced our owner will even give me the budget to make use of that extra space. We did just win the division and all but Mr. Wookey Jr still seems bound and determined to make money rather than try to win titles. It is of course possible that the league may sort of mandate the owners shell out that extra 10 mil, at least in this first year, but only time will tell how that shakes out. Thats all I have time for today. I'm still not over the fact that Pepper was one of the best players in the league this year and managed only 3 hits in that series. This will sting awhile but we will be back. "