Not offering arbitration: smart move?

The OC Register, in a piece on the smartest baseball moves of the offseason, praise the D-Backs, Yankees, and Phillies for not offering arbitration to Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu, and Pat Burrell, taking the point of view that the cheap contracts these sluggers ended up with in a down market justified the move. I disagree with this.

By not offering arbitration, the clubs lost out on draft-pick compensation for these players. However, they also took away the players' options to accept arbitration, which would've resulted in the clubs paying overpriced salaries to Dunn, Abreu, and Burrell. This is why the move is praised, but, the move only saved the clubs money if Dunn, Abreu, and Burrell would've accepted arbitration.

Sure, in hindsight the three of them would've been better off accepting arbitration, but out of 24 players offered arbitration, only two accepted, and they're both little-known relief pitchers (Darren Oliver and David Weathers). Furthermore, several players definitely did hurt themselves by declining arbitration, most notably Jason Varitek. With this in mind, I find it quite likely that players offered arbitration would've declined it, anyway, thereby netting their clubs a pick, and losing them nothing.

Granted, you can't always count on such things, and the GMs moves to not offer arbitration certainly looks better now than it did at the time, but I don't think I'd go so far as to praise the move.