I posted to Brian's blog a comment about the possibility of the Nats being willing to exceed the cap and forfeit a #1 next year. With EJ likely to qualify as a compensation guy and looking for a multi-year contract, he may be the type of guy you can safely offer qualifying arbitration to, hope will walk, and get a compensation pick or two. You give up one pick in the 2d half of the first round if you did blow the cap, but with a supplemental and possibly another pick coming back, the damage might not be so great.
that only gets you an extra 500k, which doesn't help that much, if they really blow it out, it's two years of no number 1
