As the situation stands at this moment, we're looking at $50.6 million in total salary for 26 players on the 35-man roster. We completely wasted $3 million because we needlessly overused Christian Walker and Ramon Laureano during the final game of our season. We will waste another $1.4 million to release Felix Pena and Bryan Holaday. That leaves us with just $8.5 million to spend.
With the exception of a glaring hole behind the plate, we could field a full team today. We're roughly 92 innings short of having a full starting rotation. Our bullpen is filled. The rest of our starting lineup, against lefties and righties, is complete.
So...what do we do with that $8.5 million?
J.T. Realmuto is the only decent free agent catcher available, but he's out of our price range. Besides, with Adley Rutschman due to become our franchise catcher in a year or two, we probably shouldn't commit three years to a catcher, anyway. The smarter play would be to fill that gap with a one-year solution. A platoon would be the cheapest option. We could trade for a catcher, but the asking price always seems too steep.
In retrospect, that $15.5 million we spent on Scherzer has become an albatross around our neck. If only we could find a taker for that contract, we would have more than enough money to sign Mike Trout. Of course, if we were to trade Scherzer, then we'd need to fill 174 quality innings with someone else -- which would cost too much, putting Trout out of reach. It's a real shame that we won't even be able to bid on Trout. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to snag a player in the prime of his career.
As it stands, we're looking at sitting on the sidelines for most of the auction, looking for bargains. Not an ideal situation to be in.
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