UWHabs
Well-known member
The good is if they sell off, they can potentially try to get under some of those tax thresholds. It might still be worth it to retain money to get better prospects back, although at the very least, anything you save on the payroll at least you don't pay the tax on. I think draft penalties start at 40m over the CBT threshold, and the Jays are like 77M over, so I think it would be very unlikely they could save enough at this point to get under that.
But the team does have a lot of money coming off the books after this year, and a lot of that is pretty dead money too. Springer-Gausman-Bieber is 60m, Straw is another 5-6m you can save if you decline. If you don't trade Varsho, especially after his bad year, he's probably only in line for a 5M raise in arbitration. Clement will probably need another 5M as well, and Sanchez probably only needs a 3m raise or so.
Obviously the CBA negotiations might wipe out a lot of next year. What they do will depend a lot on what the rules end up being. Realistically they still need to bring in a starter to replace Gausman, even if Ponce is healthy. But the rest of the lineup they could probably run out as is, and hope for natural positive regression for Vlad, Barger, Kirk, etc..
