Braves Interested In Ronny Cedeno

We’re awful.

I’m also not saying we’re definitely out of the playoff hunt, for we clearly have talent at many positions.

It’s merely frustrating seeing other teams try to improve, while we sit around doing nothing.

I’m impatient; I know. We’ll add a few pieces, I’m certain, and, as mentioned by cthabeerman, there may be an addition-by-subtraction situation with Lowe, Proctor, AGon, etc. leaving. Plus, we’ll have a full year of Bourn.

Then yeah, by that lofty definition I’m off.

The whole point, though, was that we’ve already gotten better by virtue of having Bourn for another year and getting rid of Lowe/Proctor/Linebrink. Even if we have the same injury problems and offensive struggles this year, those improvements alone are worth a few games, which would’ve gotten us into the playoffs.

So instead of parsing semantics and trying to nail down an admittedly vague and relative definition of “great,” I’m going to take the time to expound on my original comment:

I think we’re a good team that’s in a good position. We were close to the playoffs last year and barely missed due to a long list of circumstances and shortcomings that we shouldn’t expect to be repeated, and the moves we made during the year last year and just as the postseason started have put us in a position to be even better.

I would love for us to improve, but I’m OK if we don’t. It’s going to be hard, because there’s not a lot we can do to improve – which says a lot about how good our team already is, but it’s also a reflection of the way the market is this year. There hasn’t been a single rumor that we’ve been linked to so far this year that I think would improve our team on the whole for 2012. Not one. I understand, given the way the year ended, the desire that a lot of people (not you, necessarily) have that we go do something in an attempt to somehow “fix” the team so that it doesn’t break down like that, but the truth is that we can’t just go out and do that. So I’m glad that we haven’t done anything so far, because so far everything that it’s been reported we have our hands in has been kind of crappy, but still FW resisted – which means he’s not in a “do something because we have to do something mode.”

And the offseason isn’t over. I would love it if we could go out and sign a Rollins or a Beltran, but we don’t have the money. I would love it if we could somehow find a guy who can play LF and be an improvement over Prado (as much as I love Prado), but I don’t think anyone that fits that description is available. I would love it if we could sign a guy to a 1-year contract to play SS for us better than we expect Pastornicky to, but the shortstop market is so hot that there’s no way we can get that guy. I would love it if we could somehow use our surplus of pitching to grab an impact bat that other teams didn’t realize was on the market like we did with Uggla last year, but so far nobody seems to be buying.

As an aside from all this, like I’ve stated in other threads, I don’t think Wren has suddenly turned into the kind of GM to sit on his thumbs while the rest of the league gets stuff done. I think he’s trying to find some way to improve the team and is coming up short – if I had to guess, he’s as upset about the Lowrie deal as some of us are (but not as upset as Krash, because I don’t think that’s humanly possible). Sometimes that’s just how the market works out – in hindsight maybe we should’ve made a move way back in October, but at the time Wren was trying to work another angle. Who knows. If everything could work out perfectly for every team, the offseason wouldn’t be terribly interesting.

So, because of all of the above – the fact that we’re already improved as a team compared to last year, the fact that we don’t have a whole lot of obvious ways to improve anyway, the fact that nobody seems to be willing to partner with us in a good trade, and the fact that I don’t see any reason to lose faith in Frank – I would be ok with the end result if nothing else happened with us for the rest of the offseason. That doesn’t mean I think that we’re totally set or don’t have room for improvement, it doesn’t mean that I think we’re going to win 100 games, and it doesn’t mean that I think we’re guaranteed a playoff spot. It means that based on what I’ve seen so far, we’re doing what we can to put the best team possible on the field, which is all I can ask for as a fan. It’s still going to be a fun year and we’re still, in all likelihood, going to be potential spoilers in the NL East with a good shot at the playoffs.

I wasn’t word-smithing with “perfect” – the implication you seemed to be making was that I thought we couldn’t do anything to improve the team, which I don’t.

Same with the “great” definition – while what you post above is logically sound, the way you wrote it out in your OP strongly implied that “great == getting to the playoffs,” not that “getting to the playoffs is a side effect of being great.”

But this is the problem with ambiguous language, and is why I’ve bothered to clarify – I’m just trying to make sure my point gets across.