It does not matter who you root for. We are all anti-Los Angeles Dodgers this MLB season. Yes, if you slap with The Boys in Blue, you have every right to hop aboard the us vs. them train for this year. Otherwise, you are just rooting for the baseball version of the Kansas City Chiefs. Nobody outside of your fanbase wants to see you win, but you just have to accept you are better than everyone else.

So as a lifelong Atlanta Braves fan, I have grown so tired of the team seemingly getting its ass kicked with every transaction the team does not make. So far this offseason, the Braves have cut ties with Travis d’Arnaud, Max Fried, A.J. Minter, Charlie Morton and Jorge Soler to name a few. Not landing Roki Sasaki was expected. Losing Minter to the New York Mets is the epitome of a total gut-punch.

Once those two transactions took the league by storm, I wondered if it could get any worse. While I have no issue with left-handed relief pitcher Tanner Scott not choosing the Braves in free agency, of course, he signed with the Dodgers for some ungodly amount of money. The San Diego Padres were never going to be able to retain him. Frankly, nobody could outbid the Dodgers for his services either.

I understand that Alex Anthopoulos is especially patient in free agency, but this is getting ridiculous.

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While I do realize that Atlanta should field one of the better teams in the National League again next season, the frustrating part in all this is Braves Country seems to be completely at the whim of whatever Anthopoulos decides. He has ownership’s blessing to be a big spender in free agency, and he has chosen not to. That is not his preferred method of team building, but you have to at least try!

This is not about Scott. It is not about Sasaki. While it might be a little about Minter going to the Mets, as that is going to be so incredibly to stomach, it is all about the perception of the Braves coming across as cheap and not being all that interested in winning. You did not move the team from Atlanta to Cobb County to build Truist Park and The Battery to have one championship a quarter century.

I feel like I am beating a dead horse here. Frankly, we are all so very tired of it. This was an incredibly frustrating, injury-plagued season for the Braves. Having the blessing from ownership to spend big could have been a way to alleviate the pain that was last year’s joyless slog of a season, outside of the great play Atlanta got from Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez and Marcell Ozuna. Instead, we got no relief.

I would love to eat crow with the 2025 team becoming a juggernaut, but have we seen to believe that?