He certainly could be either of those things, or various others as well. What are you going to have if you do nothing? Just more nothing. Payroll savings? Irrelevant at this point and for the foreseeable future. Blocked prospects? Yeah....not an issue. I'm not looking forward to 2014's Mike Pelfrey, or 2015's, or 2016's, and so on. All largely wasted dollars that could have gone toward a single high quality player. But hey, we don't have to worry about overpaying them in year three! We'll just overpay them one year at a time instead. You're way too hung up on the possibility of overpaying someone at the back end of a contract.