Lots of payroll opening up: What would you do?

[grampahol]

I'd like to see Bob Howsam style of team building, but with a bit less of his ultra conservative approach. As good as Howsam was he was well behind the times when it came to free agency and let the BRM disintegrate because of it. Howsam wanted baseball to stay the same to back in the days when teams all but owned players lives to the team's detriment toward the end of his long baseball career. But he was a master of team building back when they could still control players the way they used to.. He believed in speed, youth, strong defense and loathes the idea of hanging onto players well beyond their prime. Every Reds fan should read the chapter about Howsam in the book "The Great Eight". It explains what he did right and what he did wrong especially towards the end. https://books.google.com/books?id=Nv4oDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
Of course team owners at the time had the foresight to give him near total control of the team acquisitions, trades and day to day operations and were willing to spend the money to achieve it..