A couple of disappointing and revealing tweets from David O'Brien about the Braves direction post Vaz-trade (first):
[Matt Holliday is] too pricey for Braves, but there's at least a slim chance they make a run at [Jason Bay].
And second:
Scratch that Bay possibility for Braves. I was just assured that Braves are out of that pursuit.
"Assured!" Nuts! This just puts the dagger further in this already disappointing day. We've got the dough to go after Bay... well, that's only somewhat true. I've taken a realistic look at the Braves salary situation, and we've got the dough this year to go after big-money free agents, but after this year we start to get hamstrung with our salary commitments. In 2011, Yunel Escobar, Martin Prado, and Jair Jurrjens all enter their first arbitration year. That same year, our currently signed stars, Brian McCann and Nate McLouth, see big raises in their salaries. All of this with virtually no money coming off our books from any other players.
If there's one thing we're about to learn from the way in which the Braves conduct themselves throughout the rest of this off-season, it's that they are very aware of this fact, and they're not going to commit any more long term money to free agents. I believe all that we're going to get this off-season are one-year stop gap fillers until Jason Heyward and Freddie Freeman are fully ready.
This is why I expect the Braves to sign Xavier Nady before the end of the year, and maybe one other small to medium sized free agent, but we're not getting into the big names or even the second tier names since the players in both of those categories would require deals of more than a year.
It's a cold reality Braves fans, but we pretty much have our team, save for one or two more folks, none of whom will be big names.