I’m glad that I’m not in charge of a professional sports team. It’s a lot of work, the pressure is intense, and at any given time a lot of people hate your guts. It is also significantly more complicated and nuanced than fans think it is–in a real-time, zero-sum world, you aren’t even guaranteed to carry out your plan even if you have one.

That’s why I’ve really appreciated the years that SB Nation’s baseball minds took a weekend at the end of the season to simulate the offseason. Somebody would be in charge of each MLB club and we’d trade and barter and bid on free agents. It was a fascinating experience where decisions rippled throughout the participants just like they would in real life.

For many of those years, I ran the Kansas City Royals. While the days of the simulation are over,

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