Was Raul Mondesi not Available?

Say hello to the Braves' new left fielder: Garret Anderson. Garret enjoys candle-lit dinners, long walks on the beach, and never taking a walk. Now, instead of having one outfielder who swings at everything, the Braves have two. Moreover, because Anderson is a wily veteran, he will almost certainly find his way into Bobby Cox's heart and will be impossible to remove from the lineup, regardless of whether he represents an upgrade over Brandon Jones. Anderson has been marginally below league average in terms of OPS in three of the past four seasons, all while playing a power position. Sure, you don't exactly expect huge numbers for $2M per season, but what are the Braves going to get for that money that they couldn't have gotten from the pupu platter of minor leaguers competing for at-bats in the outfield? I suppose that Anderson putting up a .775 OPS in 450 at-bats against right-handed pitchers wouldn't be the end of the world. If you buy into chemistry as being important, he'd probably be a good guy to have around a bunch of young players.

Joe Sheehan at the Baseball Prospectus made an excellent point regarding the Braves' failure to acquire a good left fielder: the team's smart purchases in free agency (which have to be attributed in large part to the lucky breaks that A.J. Burnett and Rafael Furcal elected to spurn the chance to play in Atlanta) have put it on the precipice of being a playoff team, so additional spending on a left fielder could have paid for itself by getting the team back into the playoffs. Here is the two-sentence thesis:

I don't mean to peg the Braves as penurious overall, just to point out that they stopped spending money at exactly the point where they might have gotten the most bang for their buck. Buying a left fielder like [Adam] Dunn would have helped make the significant investments in the rotation — more than a third of the payroll is tied up in the three new starters — pay off.

Sheehan suggests that the team would benefit from Josh Anderson in center and Gregor Blanco in left to maximize on outfield defense. Personally, I can't imagine that outfield defense could be so valuable as to make up for the holes in the lineup that those two would represent, especially when the Braves are already getting relatively little from first base and right field.