The problem isn’t your math it’s that you have zero projected free agent additions. That bullpen is horrible and the back end of the rotation is thin.
You have to leave room for additions if we want this team to compete. If you sign Bregman it makes it very challenging to make ancillary FA moves.
I mean, I had $30m left to spend on FA additions. It was “that” and ~$30m to spend.
But I guess my point is more spending in the bullpen doesn’t necessarily equate to being good, especially in that area. Martin was the highest paid “non closer” in the pen last year. He was 8th in terms of WAR (Jansen, Booser, Weissert, Kelly, Guerrero, Bernardino, Winckowski and then Martin). 9th if one wants to call Criswell a pen arm.
If someone has a better stat to look at than bWAR to rank bullpen arms, I‘m game to hear it. That’s just what I used. I think (excepting proven closers) they‘re all just dart throws, and even the proven closers are incredibly volatile. If a team is going to adhere to any kind of budget, then outside of a closer they should just throw dart after dart after dart on league minimum guys. They’re just as likely to hit.
Or to remove the Sox, Detroit had a top 4 bullpen by ERA last year. I used Cle and TB last year, I picked a new team this year, just to illustrate the point. Did Det spend even $1m on any of them? Houlton was claimed off waivers, Vest was a R5 guy, Hurter wasn’t much of a prospect, I have no idea where Sean Gueither or Brenan Hanifee came from, Jason Foley was a “name”, I guess. Andrew Chafin they kind of spent on, and he, like Martin, was their 9th best reliever.
I think Breslow can do this too for very minimal cost. His track record so far is good (Slaten and Weissert).
Starting pitching is different, for sure. But I sincerely doubt they’re spending on Cease, Gallen or Valdez, with or without Bregman. You’re probably more talking another 1/$20m deal (let’s say Brandon Woodruff, just to pick a name somewhat similar to Buehler). They’d have money to add Bregman AND that guy. Probably adding in someone like Chapman / Pressly as well (assuming Yoshida isn’t literally worthless, as in DFA material, which even I think is drastically underselling his value AND that Crawford and Hamilton have enough value that you could staple them to Story to get 1/2 has money back. I could of course be over estimating the value of Yoshida, Crawford and Hamilton).
It really doesn’t matter because they’re not signing Bregman or trading for Arenado, but if they wanted to there should be ways to do it AND stay below $LTT1 (again assuming that is their budget). If that means relying on “scrub X” instead of Chris Martin, Justin Wilson, Joely Rodriguez or whatever, I’m good with that.
But, it doesn’t matter what I think. The bigger thing is, they clearly don’t want to and aren’t going to. Which I fully admit. But I appreciate the thought exercise. It was really interesting to look at closely since I think they’re “done” for this year (fringe moves like more versions of Matt McShane or Blake Sabol excepted).