You of all people are going to try to say that having extra money(and not a trifling amount either) to spend is meaningless? You're going to approach an offseason with X to spend differently than when you have X -15 million to spend. Plus we're talking about a multi-year deal here. Without Soriano, maybe they would've been able to more easily stretch for a guy like Sanchez or [insert your 'IFA that got away' here] knowing that for half the deal they'd have ~20% more payroll available to them. Maybe Scott Baker becomes Liriano instead, I dunno. I do know that when you're working with financial limitations, having a huge chunk of your payroll in one post-prime player who later was traded and became dead money is going to make a material difference in your planning. My opinion is that thus far their strategy is that they have a number they feel a guy is worth and they won't go much beyond that. Maybe this changes now that they're interested in being good, but in previous seasons I don't buy it. This is reasonable and believable, and also probably right.