Ten days ago, storyteller threw down a well-read post on our cap space prospects , with which you are all probably well acquainted by now.

In it, he threw down details about who will be absolutely on the payroll for 2009-2010 (Roy, Oden, LaMardridge, Sergio, Rudy, Przybilla); what our cap space would be before retaining any players not under contract beyond next season ($33mil); and who those players we might keep are (MarWeb, Trout, Frye, Blake, JJ, JaJo, McBob).

He then put out the invitation: "So, feel free to create your own scenarios for cap room!" He gave us all the info necessary to find out that, if we had specific players in mind to keep and let go, we could name them, approximate their cost, and formulate what our cap would REALLY BE, if we just picked who to keep, and at what price.

A hundred comments later, and not one person replied with a scenario.

So I finally did, but it's involved enough that I felt I should post it fresh. Any numbers in this post not fully explained are taken from the original post, so you might wanna hit that up for reference in case you question my unexplained numbers. Here:

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Okay; let’s go wild and keep everyone but the JJ’s (Jack AND Jones). We know the costs of the team options on Blake & Trout, but for the rest, I’m going to have to guess an extension amount; I’ll explain my prices for each, but in each case I’m pricing them high, the max we’d need to keep them. They should be very keepable for less, but I wanna go worst-case-scenario for keeping these players, show the absolute lowest cap we should be left with for keeping THIS PARTICULAR BUNCH.

The group (and their prices) would be:

- Trout: $4mil (team option being picked up)
- Blake: $4.93mil (team option being picked up)
- MarWeb: $5.5 $4.4mil (the cost of the mid-level exception, the most he’d get on the open market. He might not get that, but he sure wouldn’t get more.)

- Frye: I say . . . $3mil. Simply being about a mil less than Outlaw. Also, he likes Portland (the team AND the town) and wouldn’t push for more if this was thrown down as the not-a-penny-more offer. Might be high. But it's NOT low, which is the aim.
- McRoberts: $1mil (the mentioned cap hold on a qualifying offer)

That’s it.
But remember! – the $33mil cap space figure assumes we pick at #13 and sign the dude. 
As I’ve said repeatedly, I’d trade all our picks this year (the #13 and 3 second rounders)
for future draft considerations: BANK THOSE PICKS, so to speak.
So return that pick’s $1.93mil to the cap, dagnabbit!

That adds up to the original $33mil cap, minus $18.43 $17.43mil to keep Trout, Blake, Frye, MarWeb, and McBob,
plus $1.93 in payroll savings from banking our draft picks: $16,500,000  $17,500,000
Oddly enough, that’s the total cost of keeping those players. I just cut the cap exactly in half.

Anyway: $16.5 $17.5mil. And that’s a HIGH figure. 
(I bet Frye and MarWeb actually cost a bit less, but I wanted guarantee in this exercise.)

So if we re-up that group, renounce the JJ’s, bank our picks, and don’t make any deal before the 2009 offseason,
we’d have at least $16.5 $17.5mil (maybe more) in 2009 to add to a group that includes (in order of positions, point-to-center):
Sergio, Blake, Rudy, Roy, Marweb, Trout, McBob, Frye, LaMardridge, Przybilla, and Oden.

(If you notice, that divides neatly into two starter/white-unit squads: Blake/Roy/MarWeb/LaMardridge/Oden, and Sergio/Rudy/Trout/Frye/Joel. Feel free to make a case for Rudy trading spots with MarWeb if you're high on Rudy.)

Plus the rights to Petteri and Freeland, and our future draft picks (including the banked ones, 
what we trade the #13 and three second-rounders for. I say two picks, in deals with two different teams: 
- #13 and a second-rounder for a 2010 first-round pick, protected no better than top 3, and
- the two other second-rounders for a second-rounder and the right to switch first-round spots in 2011.)

UPDATE! [4:45 Pacific time] - After some thinking, there's no WAY MarWeb's gonna cost $5.5mil to re-up. If things get anywhere near that compete-against-other-teams'-mid-level-exception stage, it'd be because extension talks broke down, and we let him go to free agency, and we competed THERE. I'm talking pure before-the-offseason EXTENSION here, the sort of signing that would AVOID competing with other teams, not WIN that competition!

My Martell price hereby drops a million smackers, from $5.5mil to $4.5mil: a just-above-Trout level. Because that's what Martell IS: About as good as Trout, maybe a bit better. And so I'm changing all numbers by a million, as well, and the cap space I figure is $17,500,000.

Apologies to those who voted in the Poll, and whose vote would be different for the new numbers than it was for the old numbers. Also, I can't edit the $16.5 mil figure in that poll, so for those of you voting now, read it as $17.5mil.

I like that picture.

And I repeat storyteller's invitation to create specific kept-players/cap-space-result scenarios of your very own.

(If it helps, here's the short-version form:

Players to keep:

[ list here, with prices ]

Total cost of retained free agents:

Cap space after retaining that group of players:

See how easy it is?)