Author Topic: Nationals acquire Doug Fister from Tigers  (Read 24069 times)

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Online JCA-CrystalCity

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Re: Nationals acquire Doug Fister from Tigers
« Reply #475: December 05, 2013, 08:43:04 AM »
This article goes into the budget.   Rizzo says Lerners will give him the money "if it makes sense." 

 the http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/as-winter-meetings-begin-nationals-general-manager-mike-rizzo-open-to-upgrading-roster/2013/11/12/f2d901e2-4bdd-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html

Nice and ambiguous.  Kilgore speculates that the team was at about $125MM between scheduled increases, likely arbitration, and filling out the roster with minimum wage guys to replace Tracy and Haren.  MLBTR projects Fister to get $6.9MM this year, so that bumps the projected payroll to over $130MM right now, with no other moves. 

We know the luxury tax threshold is $189MM.  You can assume they have a chunk of that budgeted for signing Harper or his replacement, probably Desmond and Ramos, and some of their pitchers.  Figure they try to get by on the cheap with Span and then Goodwin or some other system product, and maybe view Skole as the 1st baseman of the future.  Those would be the spots they might have future cost savings planned.   I don't see this market supporting a $200MM team, but I could see the Lerners maybe going a little higher than Detroit given our market is better and deep pockets for an aging owner.