That's right. The 2012 team was still in the chase for a wild card at the end of July. And it's not like Valentine was the main reason for the awful season. But he was certainly bad enough to blow his one and last chance to be an MLB manager.
Nava was definitely one of my favorite players the first half of last year at least. He was an on-base machine for a pretty long stretch. He had a lot to do with our first half success.
I get that, but I don't understand your statement that 'they saved a grand total of 4 million.' I would guess Boras was originally asking for 35-45 million.