My expectations is that they should be in the top 5-8 teams in international spending because that is where they are roughly on revenue, especially when you consider the extra revenue they would get from winning.
They did not go from middle of the road first of all. They went from a team that might have been in the 10-20 range of spending annually but NEVER competed for the top prospects. Never went into the penalty periodically by spending $20 million plus. So add up our $2-$4 million a year and compare to teams that went 2-4-20-1-2-20 (cycling through penalties) and our cumulative spending is below average.
Now where should they be this year. First, they are not in the penalty. Second, they are not cash limited. Third, they have lots of depth that could be traded for allocations. There are maybe 4 or 5 teams that can say all those things. Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers maybe. Not sure who else. So by finishing in the 3-5 range of international spending (we will likely be behind the Yankees, Red Sox and Rangers when all is said and done) is kind of middle of the pack among the teams in our situation
It is good that they have finally increased their spending a bit. It took a system that limited spending for that to happen though. And with Klentak he failed to trade for any allocations last year. That was a major failure of opportunity for a rebuilding team. As I said, this year is better. But we also got only one of the top 20 prospects. A little more money and that could have been two.
For fans who like efficiency of spending in player acquisition they should be pushing the team to max out here and even with the progress this year it looks like they could leave about $1.5 million of spending on the table.
