Shapiro's Contract Negotiations with Matt Lawton will always puzzle me.

Shapiro knew that Dolan wanted the Indians payroll down to the 50-60 million dollar range.

Matt Lawton makes around 7 million a year.
That is between 12-14 percent of the Indians major league payroll budget. Yet Shapiro knew that no team had ever won a championship since the mid 80's if anyone of their ballplayers made over 13.5% of teams total payroll.

But on top of the that, How could Shapiro ever hope to keep Jim Thome if Matt Lawton is ALREADY making the equivalent to an amount that might deprive us of a championship?

I read that Thome was surprised at how much Lawton got for his contract. Perhaps Thome figured he should be making a good bit more than Lawton, and if Lawton was at the maximum threshold based on the Indians total payroll, then there was no way he could be signed and still field a decent team.

Although I still think Thome should have settled for 11 million a year for 5 years.