One of the most commonly used principles in economics is opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of something is simply the highest valued alternative that must be foregone when a choice is made. Here I've presented two choices the Jays could have made. Of course the Blue Jays had other alternatives: they could have signed 6 minor leaguers and kept the leftover money, or signed a different set of players. But it is likely the Jays felt that these two options were their best choices. So the opportunity cost of choosing the A set of players is the foregone opportunity to sign the B set of players. Similarly, the opportunity cost of the set of players B is simply the set of A players.

So we see that the Jays did not give up Jose Cruz for "nothing". Instead they gave up Jose Cruz and the opportunity to play 5 minor league players and received the opportunity to play Bordick, Catalanotto, Creek, Myers, Sturtze, and Tam instead. So when a team decides not to retain the services of the player, they always receive two things in return: the money it would have taken to retain the player, and the spot on the 25 man roster that the player would have taken. If we could just educate the media on the concept of opportunity cost, sports fans would be given more information to understand the choices that sports teams make.