that's not really a fair way of looking at it. say the cubs put, i dunno, lahair at 1B and he produces 1 win a year for the league minimum. then the $13M+ that they saved by not signing dunn is spent on, say, two pitchers who produce 3 WAR. they've done better than if they had signed dunn. the objective is to maximize the production per dollar, not get as much production out of one position as possible regardless of cost.