As an Angels fan, I would have liked to have seen him finish his career with the team. And I don’t mean that in a “Hey, Craig Biggio, let’s punt the whole season” way either. Oh well.

Mark—I don’t disagree with you on most of that. Especially the Peavy and Burnett deals.  Sentimentality aside, I will also grudgingly admit that letting Smoltz go was the right thing to do.

My comments here are narrowly tailored to the state of the outfield.  Sure, they could have gone after Dunn or Abreu, but there could have been other moves in the past couple of years that would have tided us over to the next generation a little better than Garret Anderson, Matt Diaz, and prayers for Jeff Francoeur.

I don’t think the backlash is of the “Garret Anderson is awful” variety, but more of the “this is really the best we could do?” sort.

There were about 350 LFs with mediocre defense and who were getting lowballed to the point of accepting confederate dollars, and… we got Anderson. It is depressing.

As an Angels fan, I too will miss Garret.  And as far as production goes, I’m pretty sure him and Juan Rivera were a tossup, with Juan having a little bit more upside and Garret being a better fielder/baserunner.  The Angels decided to go with Rivera, probably because at the time it looked like Garret was going to be WAY too expensive.  Now that prices have come down so much, I’m sure the Angels wish they’d have waited.

I’ll miss you GA.

The Braves have had about the strangest offseason imaginable… But the weirdest part is, I think at least, the team’s probably better off not getting the guys they missed on.

On Peavy, I didn’t want the Braves to acquire him for what the Pads were asking; and he didn’t want to be a Brave, so it’s a moot point.

I didn’t want Burnett or Furcal in a Braves uniform at nearly any price; especially not on a multi-year deal.  The Yankees did the Braves organization an enormous favor by out-bidding us, and as a Braves fan I was thrilled that they did.

Smoltz, at the price he was asking for simply didn’t make sense for the organization.  And I like, for him, that he has a chance to win another title now.

Missing on Abreu and Griffey sucked.  But Griffey is a bad enough defender that he probably is better off in the AL anyways.

My only complaint is that we didn’t get a big-time bat; which I felt should have been offseason priority numbero uno. 

We added 2.5 starting pitchers, albeit the last half one I was hoping would be next seen five years from now on a podium in Cooperstown with Greg Maddux.  But we re-vamped the rotation, and I truly feel that Derek Lowe is as much an impact pitcher as Peavy would have been.  And we now have enough pitching depth that our AAA rotation (Hanson, Morton, Reyes, Redmond, Parr) rivals a couple of big league rotations… *coughs* O’s *coughs*

Plus, by missing on Griffey, Peavy, Furcal, Burnett, and Smoltz, the Braves saved trainer Jeff Porter from a lot of stress.