Jays avoid arbitration with everyone

is that your screen name Jeremy? LOL

Of course, that isn’t to say his contract isn’t absurd, but I blame Ricciardi for that more than anything.

That’s like Pujols territory. I don’t doubt (well, I do, but I’m willing to acknowledge the possibility) that he can rebound to the point where he’s a half-decent player overall (i.e. not the worst at his position in all of MLB, as he was this year), but he’s not going to hit .310/.380/.520 with Gold Glove defense in CF, which is about what it would take to be worth that kind of dough.

I’m still hopeful, though, that the economy recovers to the point where a few teams decide mid-season that they have money to spend. “Contenders” sometimes get stupid at the deadline and are willing to take on contracts they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s not like I’m expecting anything in return, and we’d probably have to send at least some money, but I could see the Yankees at some point saying “this guy might help us out, the Jays will kick in some cash, and it’ll only average out to [let’s say] $15M a season over 4 years. We can do that.”

Or, we put him on waivers and some team makes a mistake and claims him to try to block a team above it in the standings from getting him. Then we drop the bomb. Hey, worked with Rios.

Getting out from $21M a year, or even halving it, could open up a whole range of possibilities over the next few seasons. I say “could” because chances are pretty decent that the saved money will go nowhere but into Rogers’ coffers along with the Burnett, Rios, and Rolen money. But assuming that at least some gets reinvested into the team, that’s a windfall, particularly if the market for FAs stays as tight as it is. There are way better players than VW out there who are signing for a whole lot less. Matt Holliday and Jason Bay will both earn less than VW per season. Johnny Damon might sign for under $5M this year, and certainly it’ll be less than $7M. The list goes on. In fact you could get Johnny Damon and Jason Bay for less than what you’d be paying VW, or about the same.

If I were AA I would make offloading VW one of my highest priorities, and I think it can be done within the next 8 months or so if the Jays are strategic about it and are willing to pony up some cash to get out from under this deal. If VW is still around in a year, we’ll know that it likely wasn’t a priority, and that would probably be because AA figured out that the saved money wouldn’t be made available to him anyway, so there was no point.