To be fair, even the Brewers can absorb one bad contract as long as it isn't egregious. Suppan was already in the tank when they made their first playoff run in '08, and his salary didn't keep the Brewers from adding more free agents in the following years. Randy Wolf, Lohse, Garza all at least provided some amount of value in a couple years of their contracts as well, so while they weren't outstanding, none of those really crippled the franchise long term. Now, if they had pulled a Pujols type deal with Prince (as much as I am a fan of Prince in his playing days), that would have crippled them for sure. That said, expecting a small market team to fork out money a la old school Yankees payrolls, or to even be at the Luxury tax is pretty silly for anyone to expect.