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Treating available pre-arb rookies as 1.5 WAR each means that on your calculation the civic strategy counts as an investment of something like 20 million dollars for a net effect of .5 WAR. Obviously this is a bad investment, and the net of say, 4 WAR that Fielder gives you is a better play. Hence, I suspect that the USSM assumptions differ from your own about the performance of the available pre-arb talent. The more general point about the advantages of Stars and Scrubs is not one I object to.