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Let's say we can address 1B with a Lee trade.  Just pretend someone in a race wants to give us a Brett Wallace or something.
Victor Martinez would then be our major FA add.  I can live with that.  I'm not sure what you think he's gonna make on the open market, but I'd be surprised if it's substantially out of our price range.  Aging catchers don't tend to go for HUGE dollars, and Victor at 32 is an aging catcher. I expect him to get 4 or 5 years at 12 mil - and I'd take that.  If it's 18 mil, then no, and maybe he does get that.  We'll see.
If you address the catcher situation via trade instead, with adding a better young stud than we currently have, that's fine too - tho I think that might hurt some folks having to suffer more growing pains.
But then you have the money for Cantu, who can play in the AL fine.  Not great...but fine.  And his glove at 1B is probably better than fine, for those worried about dropping offense.
*shrugs* I expect to spend very little on pitching.  Since we're out of the race, we will keep our minor league pitching, add some extra in trade perhaps, and we just drafted eleventy billion arms. 
But we need to trade for a bat and pay for a bat to have a chance. Gutz and Ichiro can't drive the offense, not when the rest of the offense is this bad.
Maybe the Nats let Dunn get away and we do what we should have done a few years ago - sign him to play DH for us.  I'm not locked in on one or two guys (and basically picked the two I did name out of a hat).  We have plenty of lineup misery and can patch whichever one we like with money.
One or two more will be patched with talent (Ackley and New Traded For Guy).
But if you blow it up completely, you may never get it back.
The Indians blew it up in 2001 - and in a town that had set the consecutive home game sellout record their attendance bombed.  They've averaged just over 2 million fans a year since.  Sounds good, but they were sitting at 3.4 million a year for years.
The Mariners since deciding not to blow it up after 2003 have averaged 2.5ish million fans at the gate.  Maybe Mariners fans are more loyal...but I wouldn't count on that.  If you trade away every face of the franchise you have, then you'd better find some new faces fast.  They haven't done that in Cleveland, even with some good players - and they haven't won.
The Indians traded Bartolo Colon, too, at the height of his skills, so it's not like they didn't have an arm to auction off.
Maybe blowing it up after 2003 would have been the right decision on the field.  In hindsight though, and seeing what happened in Cleveland, it actually could have gone very poorly for us.  The TV contract getting done in 07 was a big deal for this franchise.  450 mil for TV rights through 2020?  Huge.
And since the same guys are in charge, and still making money, working this way, I don't expect an imminent implosion of the roster this time either.
Lee gone?  Yes.  Maybe some bullpenners?  Yes.  Ichiro and Felix? No. We'll see a budget increase before we ditch the great pitcher on a reasonable contract.  For better or worse.
~G

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