Is WAS paying another 8.5M in 2013? Before the deal, Howard is eating up 10M of cap space on WAS. After the deal, Howard would still be eating up 8.5 of cap space and would put way over the cap.

You are making the assumption that big market teams always has a lot of unused salary cap room, which is not the case.

This restructuring debate was brought up by who has one of the lowest caps in the league. Teams like and cannot restructure any contracts simply because they don't have the cap room.

I really don't see what the big deal is besides the change in re-sign value.

MLB salaries are 100% guaranteed, no?  What player would sign that restructured deal in a hypothetically realistic situation.  I should have just restructured all those bad contracts I inherited in my first season (Peavey and H. Bell). 

They are 100% guaranteed. Just because the contract has been structured doesn't mean the team isn't paying 100% of the contract value.

It also damages the salary structure as large teams could take huge gambles on players via free agency and if they suck they merely restructure.  Small market teams would immediately be damaged as they have less cap to bid on these players. 

It would also create insane market bids for players as there really are no consequences to signing a player way over his value if you can restructure him.  Really I could restructure immediately and get my money for bidding back too.  As you can see the loopholes are endless.  And as I stated first, I don't believe the MLB has anything like this.  If it did it would be hard to translate into this setting.

You lost me completely - I don't see how big market teams can take advantage of this. Again, restructuring contracts does not change the amount of money a team has to pay out. If a big market team bids recklessly, it's still on hook for the player contract (the only thing changed is the timing of the payment). Hell, the team gets more instant salary relief via a drop then restructuring.

3yr, 2m per

6m