Cap

[peter delevett <pdelevett@amcity.com>]

Hey boys and girls. I wanted to revisit a message I sent last September, when
we were looking ahead to the '99 season and doing some salary speculatin'.

Warwick had produced (from somewhere) 98-99 salary figures for the team that
looked like this:

Kenny - $5.84 m
Dana - $3.5 m
Minor - 2.52 m
Perv - 2.42 m
Trav - 2.4 m
Ron - 2.03 m
DeQ - 1.4 m
Walker - $1.21 m
Walter - $975 k
D Jones - $814 k
Bruce - $507 k

TOTAL - $23.67 mil.

There was confusion surrounding Antoine's salary - Warwick thought it might be
off by as much as $1 million, but considering that Walker is in the last year
of a 3 year, $4.7 million deal, and that he made $1.86 mil in 97-98, let's
assume his cap figure for '99 is $2 million (which might be high, as it would
mean he made only $800K as a rookie - doubtful). These figures also didn't
include Pierce, who I postulated would earn $1.5 million in '98-99 based on
what the #10 picks had gotten the two previous years. (With the shift in the
rookie cap, this could be skewed, but let's assume the basic tenet that a
rookie earns about 8-10% more than his year-before counterpart did will
basically remain in effect).

Using these very quick and dirty figures for Toine and Pierce, that bumps us
right under $26 million. The final bit of uncertainty was whether Radja is
still under our cap for $2.5 million; assuming he is, we are looking at a cap
figure of $28.5 million. The latest I have heard is that the cap will rise to
just over $30 million for the truncated 1999 season, less than many had hoped.

So, that would leave us with maybe $2 million available to spend. Geiger is on
record saying he wants $2.8 million; Popeye Jones earned $1.89 million last
year, and he would probably want at least that to re-up -- let's even say $2
million. 

So here are the scenarios:

1) We re-up Jones for $2 mil, sign Pierce for $1.5 mil and are right up
against the cap unless we trade somebody for picks.

2) We let Jones slip away and try like hell to dump salaries. Dumping Dontae
would give us the extra $800 K to sign Geiger.

3) My favorite scenario: dumping Donate AND Minor gives us the room to sign
both Popeye and Geiger. The problem, of course, is that we would not likely
find anyone to take those guys without having to swallow someone else's salary
albatross. I'd love to think we could trade them for second-round picks -- I'd
take a second rounder for Minor even up and be happy -- but nobody is likely
to be that dumb or generous. That means, if we are going to have to take on
new salaries, we'll have to dump even more to get salary cap space for Jones &
Geiger -- say, Pervis & Travis. Again, the problem is, who would want to take
them? Travis does have some trade value, I believe; Barros and DeClercq
probably have more, though I'd hate to lose Dana.

All of which brings me back to the gloomy conclusion I arrived at last fall,
which is that we will in all likelihood have to bid Jones goodbye to land
Geiger. Our only hope for relief is if the Radja figure is wrong; I wish
anybody knew the truth about this.