I think they could have overpaid for Sanchez and Marcum and the deals would have looked better. We'll see what those guys sign. You guys may be right about Andrus, but picking up Reyes, who signed a contract that maximized his value in his first year, is very short-sighted. Johnson was average last year with a dropping strikeout rate, and was out most of the year before. There's certainly value in picking him up for 1 year at 13 mil, but he comes with significant risk. The move makes sense, they improved their roster a lot for this year, but it's not going to rank high among most baseball savvy moves of the year, so Anthropolous shouldn't be praised as executive of the year for his owner increasing payroll. Also consider that if teams signed a bunch of free agents to backloaded deals, traded them to a sucker that wanted to pick up their contracts for a nice batch of prospects, and then went out and signed another bunch of free agents to backloaded deals, it would be a foolproof strategy. The Marlins' crop of free agents were no special group, the contracts were not praised at the time of being bargains and nothing about last year made them look better.