[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

That's a side effect of too much money to spend. If you had a $220M payroll budget, have "only" $150-$175M invested in your major leaguers, and Helton, for example, is over the hill (which he clearly is, look at his salary request), then why not acquire another multimillion dollar first baseman, and send Helton down to the minors until his contract runs out?

Of course, the hope would be that Helton would just retire rather than play in A ball. As I said, retirements of guys like Helton has been mentioned to Clay. But really, I don't see it as a big deal--unless Helton is blocking a youngster from playing down there. It's not like him being in single-A actually has an impact on anything important. Plus, an apparent bug has been uncovered where undrafted rookies are not going into the FA pool--leaving room on rosters for guys like Helton. I'm optimistic that once that bug gets fixed, leagues will get significantly younger.

I understand your reasoning, but I have yet to see that in ML baseball. Maybe it's coming eventually...

However, I'd really like to see logic built-in for the team to not only keep high-priced players on the major league roster, but also in the day-to-day lineup (unless the guy is batting .100). We know we've seen that hundreds of times in the past - the expensive players get precedence in roster moves as well as setting the lineup.