Complete rebuilds, by their very nature, are ugly little messes that go against the whole point of sports, which is to win. It’s why even after the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs showed just how effective a to-the-studs teardown can be, a certain cognitive dissonance among fans still exists. Winning is great, so long as it doesn’t take losing to get there.

Here, then, are the Atlanta Braves, who are losing but don’t exactly want to say they’re losing because they picked about the worst possible time to start losing: in the run-up to the opening of a new stadium that gets somewhere between half and two-thirds of its funding from public money earmarked by politicians and not an open vote. So, essentially, the Braves will benefit from money unwittingly offered by the citizens to whom they’re now peddling bad baseball as an amuse-bouche for a stadium some citizens may not have wanted in the first place.

The best intentions can fall prey to bad timing, and that’s where the Braves seem to find themselves now, after the trade of shortstop Andrelton Simmons fomented unrest and the chatter about the Braves’ willingness to trade first baseman Freddie Freeman made even more waves.

Here are the facts: Ken Rosenthal’s report that the Braves talked about dealing Freeman was 100 percent true. Three sources told Yahoo Sports that Freeman’s name came up in conversations with the Houston Astros as part of a mega-trade that would’ve included more than five players. It went nowhere. Neither did light chatter with other teams. Discussions about franchise-type players owed more than $100 million rarely do, and that context is vital in understanding what Atlanta is trying to do.

Full rebuilds demand open-mindedness, the idea that no player is off-limits, and it’s how the Braves were operating before the backlash against their dealing Simmons to the Los Angeles Angels for a package headlined by top pitching prospect Sean Newcomb. Nothing should matter aside from best practices, and best practices call for the maximization of talent, something the Braves have tried to achieve in the last year as they traded Simmons, Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel, Alex Wood, Evan Gattis and Jose Peraza.

Emotion happened to intervene, and in a process that demands calculating maneuvers and cold decisions, it put the Braves’ brain trust in a perilous situation. General manager John Coppolella went public almost immediately saying the Braves would not trade Freeman, telling USA Today: “I’d give my right arm before we trade Freddie Freeman.”

View photos John Coppolella became the Braves general manager on Oct. 1. (AP) More

Coppolella’s words were meant to sate a fan base that, like any, would struggle with the idea of emptying the cupboard, particularly considering the Braves for a decade and a half managed to exist by annually restocking theirs. That was old Atlanta. This incarnation needs to subsist on a payroll lower than what it spent in the early 2000s. Baseball’s revenues as a sport have nearly tripled in that time.

The Braves’ baseball-operations department is operating under the sort of restrictions that run in direct conflict with taking a team into a new stadium with momentum, and that short-sightedness falls on the carpetbagging Liberty Media ownership group that treats the Braves more as investment than ballclub. Which is well within its rights. Why an owner would make decisions that positions a product to fail before asking consumers to invest even more time and money into it, on the other hand, defies reason.

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