I do like Adam Jones a good bit, and he's a very good player entering his prime. If the rumors of what they were asking were true, then no, not the Adam Jones deal.

My argument last year was that they should get Beltran. Last year's team was very good, and needed a spark. The pitching failing down the stretch may have prohibited a deep playoff run, but you just never know what Beltran could have provided.

Most people thought what we "needed" was a CF. It makes sense logistically as Schafer/Constanza were far and away our weakest players (which is saying a lot cause Prado and JHey were struggling), but Michael Bourn (who is a good player) wasn't going to transform our offense and didn't. In fact, Bourn went .278/.321/.352 over the backhalf, a decent enough line, but everyone kept saying, "if we just get a table setter, our offense will rock n' roll."

Compare that to what Beltran did in San Fran: .323/.369/.551 with 7 homers. His OPS+ was 156, almost TWICE as much as what Bourn produced for Atlanta.

I'm not ripping on Bourn, the fact is he just didn't improve the offense. He wasn't what we needed, but Wren misevaluated. We needed a hitter, a guy who could produce runs, especially with Heyward floundering, Prado being stagnant and then eventually Uggla and McCann petering out by season's end. If you look back over July/August, Dan Uggla basically was our offense. He went on a torrid run. Chipper was solid, but then got hurt. So you need a guy in there that's a threat... that scares pitchers, and Beltran is that.

Now, the arguments against the move were a) Cost and b) Who plays CF? I'll tackle B first... You can try Beltran or Heyward there. Heyward is probably the best option, because he is so rangy. Beltran has lost a lot of his formerly elite range, but he could probably play CF in a pinch.

Now in terms of cost, that's another matter. We got Bourn relatively on the cheap, but when you really think about it there's a REASON for that. very rarely do organizations make completely bone headed trades that don't return fairly equal value. Bourn came cheap because Bourn isn't worth as much as Beltran, isn't as good as Beltran and didn't perform as well as Beltran.

So essentially this is what I mean when I say I'm not sure I trust Wren to evaluate our actual needs.

As for Pence, he's a good player, but considering the cost, and the fact that he probably couldn't even play CF in a pinch, it just wasn't worth it. Beltran is a considerably better bat than Pence, IMO (historically). Of course, Pence went on a tear in Philly, so there's that.

Anyway, sorry for the essay.