Now, I'm really depressed. I had never even considered that the terrible bench play was attributable to terrible bench pay. I did a check at baseball-reference and found:
Chad Tracy, $700,000
Mark DeRosa $800,000
Xavier Nady $700,000
Roger Bernadina $435,000
Steve Lombardozzi $481,000
All roughly veteran minimum (Bernadina and Lombardozzi aren't FA eligible) and we're getting what we paid for, veteran minimum performance.
Jerry Hairston makes $2.25 million this year and $3.75 million next year. Mark Kotsay, our torturer in SD, makes $1.25 million. Cody Ross $3 million. Hell, Laynce Nix makes $1.15 million this year and $1.35 million next.
We have to have the cheapest bench in baseball because there's not much room for less that's allowable by the rules.