For me, it’s worth looking at the Phillies as an example. Dombrowski is a spender, they have multiple players they’re paying more than $20m/year to, not all earning it. Last year, their highest bWar position player was Bryson Stott (4.3 wins), a first round pick from 2019. Their best defensive player was Rojas, who was signed for $10,000 in 2018.
Without either, they’re probably an 83-85 win team, fighting for the postseason. Spending big on free agency requires contributions from cost-controlled players to be successful. Unfortunately we can’t really project how some of our cost-controlled guys will perform next year. Maybe Rafaela is a unicorn with his K rate and he gives us 3 wins, maybe Duran shows even more improvement with his defense and he becomes a 4-win player, or Abreu is legit and gives us 4 wins. Or Houck is able to control his splitter and gives us 150 innings of 3.50 ERA pitching.
The best thing about Yamamoto was that he would still be in his prime when Mayer, Anthony and the others from the farm graduate.
It would suck to spend up to the limit on Montgomery and Snell, then be unable to spend again when our best prospects graduate but both pitchers are past their prime and have basically replaced Sale on the roster. We’d be in the same position we’re in today, where the best case scenario is winning 90 games.