What do the Atlanta Braves do now?

The headline from Talking Chop:

Heyward trade just the beginning for the Braves

The Braves are willing to shop around almost everyone.

The headline from MLB Trade Rumors:

Braves Meeting With Jon Lester This Week

That is some fine cognitive dissonance. The Braves are rebuilding. The Braves are talking to one of the most expensive pitchers on the market. The Braves are looking to trade everyone. The Braves are looking to sign everyone. Everything must go, unless there’s something else they can get.

Before the medical apocalypse to start last season, the Braves were supposed to harass the Nationals all season. Considering a huge chunk of their planned rotation was hurt or ineffective, they did a pretty fair job hanging around. It wasn’t nearly enough, but teams who lose two of their top three starters to Tommy John surgery generally don’t make it past May intact. Now they’re supposed to rebuild, or reload, or go all-in, or fold, or put a pair of jacks in their crib, or hang on to the “Q” and hope that they draw a “U.”

Let’s decide for them. As far as I can see, there are three options.

In this scenario, Justin Upton is a big, big deal. Teams normally don’t want to pay top-prospect dollar for one-year rentals, but when the options are Pablo Sandoval at six years or Nelson Cruz for tens and tens of millions, suddenly a relatively inexpensive power threat like Upton would draw a lot of interest.

It makes sense, in a way, to rebuild. Everything that’s good about the Braves right now is young. Julio Teheran. Freddie Freeman. Andrelton Simmons. Alex Wood. Craig Kimbrel. Evan Gattis (to a lesser, older extent.) It’s not an exhaustive list of elite talent, but it’s a nifty core around which a team can build. You have an ace, a #2, a dynamic defensive shortstop who still has room for offensive growth, a #3-hitting first baseman, a power threat in a corner outfield spot, and one of the best relievers in baseball, and all of them should be good in three years. That’s not how it’s going to work -- baseball! -- but there are no reasons to doubt any of them currently, and they’ll be around if the Braves want them.

Except that’s a quarter of the 2014 roster, with various role players and youngsters filling in another large swath. We’re not even counting Shelby Miller, who still has enormous potential, or Mike Minor, who is almost certainly better than the pitcher wearing his uniform last season. The 2015 Braves will not be without talent, even if they ship Justin Upton away for prospects or other forward-looking players. So if that’s the starting point, what’s the point of delaying the win-now mentality? To get some money off the books, I guess. To maximize the return for Justin Upton, certainly.

Of those players up there, only Gattis could conceivably be moved this offseason. That’s not exactly a full rebuild. There’s no way to do a full rebuild for the Braves unless you salt the earth and trade Freeman, Teheran, and Simmons, which wouldn’t make sense in almost any scenario. There’s no such thing as a full rebuild for the Braves. It has to be tempting to stare at the different permutations of the offseason and wonder what could be added to that core instead of subtracted. Which leads us to ...

Consider the Jason Heyward trade as an example. Heyward was likely going to test the free agent market. Shelby Miller can’t until after 2018. While Heyward was more likely to help the 2015 team by a large margin, Miller is still expected to help the major league roster as presently constructed. It wasn’t a deal that was wholly focused on 2018, in other words.

They could do the same with Justin Upton, too. The Mariners are a team that’s widely reported to be interested in him, and they have young pieces that could contribute immediately. I’m not going to embarrass myself by concocting an inane mock trade, but there are Mariners pitchers who could contribute in 2015 for the Braves, with a couple hitters who could do the same. The template of the Heyward trade could easily be repeated with Justin Upton and nearly every interested team.

I don’t think this is a realistic option, but there are those Lester rumors up there, so we’ll at least pretend. First the bad news: About a third of the Braves’ payroll is going to B.J. Upton, Chris Johnson, and Dan Uggla. Those three will make about $36 million to contribute nothing or something close to it. Here’s the recent history of the Braves’ payroll:

2000: $86 million, 3rd (of 30)
2001: $92M, 6th
2002: $93M, 7th
2003: $106M, 3rd
2004: $88M, 8th
2005: $85M, 10th
2006: $90M, 9th
2007: $87M, 15th
2008: $102M, 10th
2009: $97M, 11th
2010: $84M, 15th
2011: $87M, 15th
2012: $83M, 16th
2013: $90M, 16th
2014: $111M, 14th

Remarkably consistent. If you factor in the inflation of salaries, it’s remarkably consistent, with the trend line almost pointing downward. The Braves have a new stadium coming, but that’s not a financial windfall that can simply be transferred over to the active roster. They don’t have a fancy TV deal, and they won’t for a long, long time.

But maybe there’s something I don’t know. Pretending that’s the case, we find the Braves are the perfect team to try out some egregious spending. Lester would make a lot of sense. The Braves could buy a second baseman and figure out a way to get a center fielder that would push B.J. Upton to the bench. Or to a SUPER-UTILITY ROLE.

I’m sure he can still totally do that.

In this scenario, the Braves keep Justin Upton and Gattis because they’re in full win-now mode. What’s the point of signing Lester if you’re just going to trade the good Upton for, I don’t know, Trevor Bauer or something? The Braves have a not-insignificant chance of contending. Even though they dealt Heyward in a forward-thinking deal, that doesn’t mean they’re going to do the same with the rest of their good players.

The Braves are probably going to do the second one. They’ve hinted as much with the Heyward deal. Make trades that don’t kill the 2015 team, but are certainly more forward-thinking. I’d do the last one as much as possible because I have faith in the Braves’ ability to produce pitchers like Alex Wood in a lab setting, which they’ve seemingly done for the last two decades. The Justin Upton in the hand is still worth more than the ones in the bush, depending on the package teams are willing to part with to get six months of an imperfect outfielder.