Honestly, there's still a ton of dead weight on the 40-man. Guys that likely have no value here or elsewhere:
Urena - out of options
Valera - out of options
Drury - has been bad for two years and is now arb eligible with a projected salary of 2.5M
Maile - redundant on a team rostering Jansen and McGuire, and coming off a very bad year
Pannone - has options remaining, but is so bad that he doesn't really serve a purpose
Law - projected to earn 1.3M in arb and hasn't been good in the majors since 2016
Really, it would be ideal if none of these guys were on the 40-man come March.
I'm guessing Shanahan probably had a few uncomfortable conversations with his bosses. The Leafs have tons of money, but giving out the most expensive coaching contract in league history and then eating half of it when he's fired is a pretty bad look.
Yeah, he always came off as a intelligent and a genuinely good guy. Shame that he's mostly remembered as an overpaid anchor, but its good to see him back in baseball.
There's no way to do it automatically. We'll see how it goes this year. I'm guessing almost nobody will cheat.
That said, I don't think there's a reason for that rule anymore anyway. We had it in yahoo largely to lessen the administrative burden of adding/removing players on the spreadsheet, but that wouldn't be an issue in fantrax. I don't see a reason to not let owners move guys back and forth from their farms, but I haven't brought it up because I didn't want to make too many changes in one offseason.
Dude has already experienced losing a season to an exploded arm and has only made like 12M in salary in his career. I feel like I'd probably take 3/40 instead of rolling the dice on 1/18 I were him.
Jose Abreu accepts his offer. I don't think any of the 7 remaining guys are going to be severely impacted by the QO to the extent that they linger into the season. Maybe Ozuna.