Put it this way, Elias is not going to spend a lot of money on a move that he thinks is an inefficient use of funds, even if he can. That doesn’t mean he won’t sign anyone to big contracts, but he’ll be highly selective IMO.
Would it have hurt?
The Yankees? IMO, they are not and will not be our main competitors for a World Series. The Rangers, Dodgers, Braves those are the teams who have talent on par with ours. That's who we are going to have to beat.
I get it. You are marred to a certain way of doing things and that's cool.
IMO given our competition and their willingness to use all the means available in order to improve their teams, we are likely to be fighting an uphill battle, if we are going to be dogmatic about only doing things on the cheap and only having mostly all homegrown players.
Those teams had/have very good systems with very smart people running their orgs as well. And are willing to spend when necessary.
So did the Yankees and they missed the playoffs completely.
We had two top 5 starters. We had top-end pitching. They didn't pitch well. It happens.
Acquiring another starting pitcher would have guaranteed nothing.