We don't even have any random journeymen though. Everyone capable of throwing a ball is already either on the roster or on the DL, save Jefry Rodriguez, and it's about to be his turn.
I think you're really underestimating just how many guys we would have needed to offload to get down under the luxury tax threshold. The player salaries alone are right at the cap, maybe a hair under, but not a whole lot of breathing room, but the other stuff that go into the calculation take us a fair bit over. (the other stuff is "health and pension benefits; clubs medical costs; insurance; workman's compensation, payroll, unemployment and Social Security taxes; spring training allowances; meal and tip money; All-Star game expenses; travel and moving expenses; postseason pay; and college scholarships." according to an article on philly.com). These are harder for us fans to calculate but I've seen 15% upcharge as a rule of thumb, so that's anywhere from $15-30 million we'd need to trim. IF that's accurate (a big IF), you'd need to move all of Murphy, Wieters, Gio and Bryce to clear $21 million in residual salary.
I think you're also over-estimating the market for teams who'd take our high dollar players and their salaries even if they only had to give us token cash considerations or int'l slot money in return. Letting go of Bryce for nothing more than salary relief would be a really bad move, and no one is going to pay the current contract balance for Murphy, Gio or Wieters.
I get it, it's frustrating to watch the season go down in flames and not have even some luxury tax relief or a potential sleeper prospect to show for it, but the reality is, there simply wasn't a market for the guys that would have been the most practical to offload.
Who cares? We needed to replace one pitcher. Gio. Somewhere there has to be someone who can start, pitch for five innings, and not give up 10 earned runs.
You had teams show interest in Gio and Harper. The debate was over the return. They were willing to take the salary. At the end of the year, salary is reduced and GMs can justify increasing their payroll when they're close to the postseason.
