I want Megill traded because of injury concerns. Saving 4.4 million is an ancillary benefit.
Mears Can go — we don’t need him. That saves another 2M+.
That’s $6.4M that can be used at the trade-deadline. If the team needs to shed more, then Peralta can get traded for the best return, that saves another $8M, provided the return is pre-arby or prospects.
Potentially $14.4M saved less $2.4M for 3 pre-arby replacements.
Losing Mears won’t matter at all, and Megill can be replaced by Uribe. The team is as good as there is in this game at finding good bullpen arms and they have starter arm options internally that they can use throughout the season there plus Yoho and Bukauskas, who was a nice leverage arm before his lat injury.
Peralta would potentially be a bigger loss with his veteran leadership and likely 170 innings of mid-rotation or better performance. But with Ashby returning to starting and the large number of controlled starters plus Woodruff, they should be able to get to the trade-deadline in good shape rotation-wise and if not, they have an enormous amount of prospect-capital of which to pull-off another Priester-like addition.