Right, I mean its not like this payroll is full of albatross contracts. There's Zimmerman, but otherwise I think most teams in the league would be happy having Scherzer, Strasburg, Rendon, and possibly Harper on market-rate deals, with guys like Turner, Soto, Robles on or at league minimum.
If they don't want to pay Harper, that's fine - I'm happy to move on. But this isn't a Phillies situation where the roster was so full of deadweight that you couldn't be competitive even at or near the tax threshold. We have a bunch of expensive, productive players.
That's what's so frustrating. Even Zimmerman's contract is not
that bad. In 2018 he produced 1.3 WAR for $14 million. At the going rate of approximately $8 million per win, that's actually not far underwater. Granted, he'll make $20 million in 2019 counting salary and buyout, but even so, his 2017 season (or even a healthier version of 2018) would come pretty close to justifying that.
I actually think Strasburg's contract is significantly worse than Zimmerman's at this point, but the big payroll problem is that the team has zero cheap, effective starting pitchers. Roark, for all his flaws, is going to get a lot of money in arbitration - somewhere in the $8-10 million range, most likely. But when you are faced with that situation, you as the ownership group cannot simply refuse to face the facts. You have three starting pitchers, one of whom is a walking sicknote and one of whom is in his last arb year. You otherwise have the team to win a lot of games, or at least close enough to one - even average players at 2B and C create a good team in terms of position players, Harper or no Harper.
