This is the non-surprise move, the team looked listless, which is the only thing Girardi really brought to the table - the ability to coach up veterans.
I think DD is waiting until the Allstar break, but if they're out of contention, time to blow it up.
You can't return next year with a payroll near the cap and hope for a different result.
They're paying for a decade of horrible scouting, farm system management and player development.
The cap is designed to make it impossible to buy your way into championships, you can't can afford to add that much WAR through FA unless you're absolutely brilliant at finding value (i.e. hitting on every FA move, that is, getting so much surplus value where you're only paying $5-6M per WAR).
You have to produce your own talent - the advantage of being a big money team is you have the resources to re-sign that talent at a discounted rate, and then use FA to add one or two players to fill holes, not to build a team. Phillies dramatically failed at this strategy (in fact, they produced so little homegrown talent they never even tried).
