[Lamda]

well, I gotta admit Jason - you are getting me a bit depressed about the M's moves, lol, and a little pissed off. OK, so 5/65 for Schmidt - the M's will pass according to you, 4/36 for Eaton - M's will pass according to you, Igawa should not surpass bid of 7 mill, which will NOT win, so we miss out on Igawa. So WTF are we supposed to do then? We won't spend the money, we won't trade Jones, etc.... so then what happens? If they are going to do nothing, which i'm not against, atleast tell the f'ers to cut game prices in half so fans will actually go.
I hope you are wrong though or to a point I assume cause otherwise we will do nothing. As for Igawa - it will take 10-15 mill posting to win - especially with 11 teams bidding on him as you said. Sure if we then signed him to 3/21 it would essentially be say 3/31 for him but since that 10-15 mill doesn't count towards payroll I really don't give a crap. I'm sure it will be made up by the FO upping ticket prices another dollar or two anyways. Or if the FO just eats it - all the better. Assuming we re-sign Ichiro to a 3 year deal or something to play CF - i'd trade Jones for Jennings on the contingency we sign him to an extension. Keep Reed as the backup cause Jones has more trade value anyways. I don't support cleaning the farm system - but I have little to no faith on what our FO holds onto in the farm system cause the past years just haven't panned out with a few exceptions.
In short, I hope they do more than you say they will - granted the FA period sucks but they if they wont pay the prices or part with their prospects then we're in for a cold winter.