Last year it was Peavy-gate and all the Peavy talk you could handle for a solid month or two. This season, the press hasn't really nailed down anyone to pin on the Braves but several folks are trying. Here's SI's John Heyman:
The Braves may consider going after Matt Holliday, who made a huge error in St. Louis' Game 2 loss but is the biggest star who'll hit the free-agent market. Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt has said they are going to try hard to re-sign Holliday, and other candidates appear to be the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Giants. Over the last four years, Holliday ranks second in doubles (172), fourth in batting average (.325), fifth in hits (767) and runs (440), sixth in slugging (.563) and OPS (.962) and seventh in RBIs (448).
Hey, man, speculate much? This is even more speculative than the normal speculation. There's not even an anonymous front office source, or a rival GM who "has a feeling," just a bold statement of un-fact.
Our own David O'Brien fired up the hot stove of speculation this morning with this reference to who we might go after:
Anyway, here's a name that I think will come up next week: Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz. [...] If the Braves had traded for him instead of signing Garret Anderson, hey, they'd have probably been a better team. But the same could be said for Bobby Abreu and other relatively low-cost options).
But anyway, Cruz is right-handed and hit .260 with 33 homers, 20 stolen bases and an .856 OPS in 128 games, and while his .931 OPS at hitter-friendly Arlington was a lot higher than his .778 on the road, he hit almot as many homers (15) on the road than at home (18) in virtually the same number of at-bats.
Along with speculating, O'Brien plays the what-if game in virtually the same sentence.
At this rate, by the time the World Series is over the collective baseball speculativerse will have mentioned every single right-handed power bat... and probably a few lefties as well. Tim Dierkes of MLBTR doesn't have that kind of time to just wait around, so he goes ahead and lists everyone that the Braves might even be remotely interested in. Actually, he does a good job of pointing out a whole bunch of people I hope the Braves have no interest in...
Buckle-up folks, it's going to be another long hot stove.