Before the offseason started, the Braves’ stated goal was to sign two top of the rotation starters. They had $47 million to spend.

Here’s what team president Terry McGuirk said in August about the team’s offseason plans:

“We know with the kind of money we have coming off the books, we can talk to anybody we want in the marketplace,” McGuirk continued. “There’s certainly a healthy bit of skepticism about the efficiency and the effectiveness of the free-agent marketplace. But we have the ability to go out and get a real horse who can help take us to the top.”

So far Atlanta has landed Javier Vasquez, who is a horse, but probably not the horse McGuirk was talking about. He’s certainly “no ace,” as the AJC’s David O’Brien is quick to point out.

The Braves first targeted Jake Peavy, but quickly grew tired of the Padres’ demands. Then they threw piles of money at A.J. Burnett, who decided he’d look better in pinstripes.

So who’s left?

There’s Ben Sheets, who would be a good signing if the Braves’ priority is finding somebody to keep Chipper Jones company in the trainer’s room.

There’s Derek Lowe, who the Braves previously ruled out but who is clearly the best option left on the free agent market. Unfortunately, Lowe says his priority is to pitch for a winner and I’m not sure the fourth place Braves meet that standard, no matter how much they want to.

And there are guys like Randy Wolf, Randy Johnson and Jon Garland, who are clearly useful pitchers but who should not be confused with top of the rotation starters.

The Braves could always revisit the Peavy talks, but that seems unlikely. The Padres were asking for Yunel Escobar, but the Braves are no longer willing to trade their shortstop now that they’ve sent Brent Lillibridge to the White Sox as part of the package that landed Vazquez.

No, it looks like the Braves are destined to fall short of their stated goal of landing two top of the rotation starters. Way short.

What have we learned from all this? If you’re a medium market team like the Braves and you’re going to try and spend your way from fourth place to first place, you better make sure you’re not competing with the Yankees for players. Because you’re never going to outspend the Yankees, and at the end of the day it almost always comes down to money.

One final point: In August, McGuirk called this offseason “the first time we’ve really had the chance to have a rebuilding effort.” Who is he kidding? Rebuilding is when you knock everything down and start from scratch. Rebuilding is typically marked by an emphasis on young players. What the Braves are attempting is a patch job. And that’s fine, except that free agent patches are mighty expensive and Atlanta’s lineup has a lot of holes.

Now that CC Sabathia has signed, the competition for AJ Burnett is heating up. Burnett has said previously that he wants to be within driving distance of his house near Baltimore. This week we’ve learned that the Red Sox had extensive talks with the hurler and his agent, that the Braves remain in hot pursuit (and have reportedly offered in the neighborhood of 5 years, $80MM), and that the Yankees are making a concerted push as well (Thursday update: reportedly offering $85MM, five years). Ken Rosenthal has named the Cardinals as another interested team, and the Phillies are rumored to be in the mix too (Thursday update: via MLBTR, the AJC says Larry “Chipper” Jones talked to Burnett and the only NL team he would be interested in is Atlanta). The Jays have not been officially eliminated, but they are not expected to meet AJ’s asking price. (Um, ultimate update: Burnett signed with New York. He is condemned to one of the worst commutes ever!)

Our question for this afternoon: how far would AJ’s commute be from these six teams? Let’s look in the order of his likelihood of signing with each team, as we know it today:

Atlanta: 11 hours, 4 minutes

Atlanta is rumored to be pushing extremely hard for Burnett. But at first blush, that 11-hour drive is a doozy. Fortunately, this drive is (or can be) reasonably scenic. Though Google Maps wants to route AJ through Richmond on The Dread 95, it’s not that much longer just to take scenic state highway 29 through Virginia (through Danville and Charlottesville, skirting the Shenandoah Valley and the Monongahela National Forest). G-Maps puts that route just 19 minutes longer at 11 hours, 23 minutes. In fact, the scenic route may even be the quicker route if there’s nasty traffic on 95. And if AJ’s really got some extra time, there’s always the gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway.

Score: 6 out of 10. What this route lacks in brevity, it makes up for in beauty. And if you take 29, you don’t have to worry about traffic. Plus, there almost no tolls at all — maybe one when you get to DC.

New York: 3 hours, 18 minutes

New York’s goal heading into the offseason was to score two of the these three free agent starting pitchers: Sabathia (check), Burnett, and Derek Lowe. They’re also supposedly kicking the tires on Manny Ramirez. (Clearly, there are no financial restrictions after an embarrassing season in which they failed to make the playoffs.) Anyway, in terms of commuting distance, NY-to-Baltimore is one of AJ’s shorter options. However, I’m hard-pressed to think of a more depressing drive than this. First, this drive takes you through the rusty heart of New Jersey — a dreary drive even on the cheeriest of days. Driving through New Jersey not only presents you with a bleak landscape to look at, you’re not even allowed to pump your own gas at the rest stops on the turnpike. And traffic? The whole state is a giant traffic jam. Throw in the getting-out-of-New York traffic, the getting-past-Philadelphia-traffic, and another nice little jam outside of Baltimore, and you’re looking at soul-sucking gridlock almost the entire way. Oh, and tolls. Lots and lots of tolls. Especially in Delaware. Ugh.

And I’m not even going to mention New Jersey State Troopers.

Score: 3 out of 10. This drive may look short as the crow flies, but what you save in miles you will pay dearly in soul.

Boston: 7 hours, 0 minutes

This is essentially the same drive as above, only with all the mind-numbing hours of Connecticut thrown in. Again, G-Maps wants AJ to take 95, but again, it makes more sense not to. If AJ sticks to the parkways (Route 15, essentially), he can skip a lot of traffic and construction, avoid having to deal with any trucks and buses, and enjoy some leafy scenery and beautiful 1930s bridges to boot. But he’ll have to deal with even more tolls in MA and CT.

Score: 2 of 7. A seven-hour drive in the best of circs, and AJ still has to tackle the soul-sucking NY-to-Baltimore leg of the journey.

Philadelphia: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Jackpot! This isn’t even a two-hour drive. Though the Phillies are rumored to be more interested in Derek Lowe, if they do make a run at Burnett, they can use this quick cruise as a selling point. Though G-Maps again wants Burnett to put up with the Delaware tolls, he can easily circumvent them by taking Route 1 through bucolic suburban Pennsylvania instead. Yes, it will increase his drive time by about half an hour (assuming he doesn’t run into traffic on The Dread 95, which is not an assumption I would ever make), but when you’re only talking about a 2 hour 20 minute drive, max, what difference does it make?

Score: 9 of 10. Hop, skip, and a jump.

St. Louis: 13 hours, 14 minutes

Deadly. While the St. Louis-to-Indianapolis stretch is hardly the decaying sprawl that is the New Jersey turnpike, it’s not even close to the rural beauty of Virginia. Plainly put, this is a boring drive. And because of the length involved — this is, by a couple of hours, AJ’s longest commute — you don’t really want to start taking scenic detours here or there. Now, once he gets into Pennsylvania he can choose between reasonably scenic I-68/Route 40 or not unpleasant I-70/I-76. But of course, by then, he’ll be totally fried. In my experience, once you hit that 12-hour mark, the drive stops being a fun adventure and just becomes a slog. This is basically your old-fashioned put-the-pedal-down-and-make-some-time ass-haul. Also, Columbus is ugly.

Score: 1 out of 10.

Toronto: 8 hours, 19 minutes

The Jays are not expected to be able to re-sign Burnett, but let’s consider the commute AJ has now, just for the sake of completeness. Though facing this drive is likely one of the reasons that AJ has stated his preference for a team closer to home, this is actually one of the pleasanter options on the table right now. Shorter than the commutes from Atlanta and St. Louis according to G-Maps, this is likely even shorter than the drive from Boston, for the simple reason that you don’t have to find a way around New York City. Indeed, after Buffalo, the only major city you pass through is Harrisburg. Certainly, Harrisburg is a depressing husk of post-industrial American urbana, but no one would hold a gun to AJ’s head and make him pull off the highway there. And the rest of the trip really isn’t too shabby — in fact, I would imagine this is a pretty interesting drive. (I’ve been through NY and PA pretty extensively, but I’ve never gone the North-South route, come to think of it….maybe I’ll try this drive!)

Score: 5 of 10. Not great, but not terrible either.

Now, assuming he’s going to get a pile of money no matter where he signs…

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The leaves are changing and the hot stove is beginning to percolate. Pretty soon, we’ll be craving hot chocolate, hot totties, and Hot Shots Part Deux. So it must be time for UmpBump’s What They Need series, which was voted by UmpBump writers as the sixteenth best What They Need type posts on the internet. Let’s kick things off with  our lonely neighbors up north, the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays are in quite the pickle. They ought to take some solace in the fact that they won 86 games while playing in what was the toughest division in baseball this year and the overwhelmingly primary reason for their competitiveness was their pitching and defense. As a team, the Jays allowed 3.77 runs per game, which was by far the best in all of baseball. Their pitchers did very well in the three most important aspects of pitching - missing bats, limiting walks, and keeping the ball inside the park.

But it’s highly unlikely that they could repeat such successes. For one, A.J. Burnett became a free agent after opting out of the last two years of his contract that was due to pay him $24MM. Perhaps far worse, their two prized 26-year old pitchers, Shaun Marcum and Dustin McGowan, are recovering from surgery - Marcum had Tommy John and will miss the entire 2009 season and McGowan’s return date is uncertain following surgery on his labrum, though it’s believed that he won’t be back until the season is well underway. Although this is a team that still boasts ace Roy Halladay and the somewhat promising Jesse Litsch, that’s three starters that will have to be replaced before Opening Day. And I don’t know how they plan on doing this.

One spot is probably going to be filled by David Purcey, a former first-round pick who made his big league debut in 2008 following a very impressive showing in AAA-Syracuse. While Purcey was certainly not immune to struggles in the 12 starts he made for the Jays thanks to a high walk rate, his minor league numbers over the past year or so seems to suggest that he’ll be just fine on that front in due time. But beyond Purcey, it’s anyone’s guess.

It’s certainly possible that the expected return of Casey Janssen could be another piece of the puzzle, but I am skeptical as to how reliable he could be in such a role. In 2007, Janssen surprised many by becoming an effective set-up man just one season after bombing in 17 starts. But he missed all of 2008 after requiring surgery on his labrum. His minor league numbers suggest that his strikeouts could improve, but he’s yet to show that at the big league level.

Below the surface, the Jays do have other promising young pitchers. Coming into 2008, one of their best pitching prospect was 23-year old lefty Ricky Romero. But he struggled quite a bit in the 21 starts he made for AA-New Hampshire before posting a good ERA in AAA-Syracuse. It’s clear that his control remains a major issue, walking over 4.1 hitters per nine innings. There’s also lefty Brett Cecil, but he could use some more development time in AAA and Brad Mills has only notched 32 innings in AA.

I wouldn’t be so down on the Blue Jays’ chances next year if their offense was even decent. But it’s not.  It’s increasingly clear that they made a huge mistake by signing Vernon Wells to a ridiculous 7-year contract that pays him $86MM over the last four years. Wells is going to be 30 come Opening Day and he’s already among the worst defensive center fielders in baseball. He’s going to be a corner outfielder very soon and when that happens, his bat won’t look so special. And Wells was the best bat in the lineup in 2008, which should tell you something.

So here’s what I think the Jays ought to be doing.

1. Explore what value Roy Halladay has in the trade market. With the current state of their rotation, I have a very hard time seeing them competing in 2009, with or without Doc. If they can get a major league ready bat or two (preferably at the infield corner spots) plus a good prospect, they’d be in much better position to compete in 2010. With his comparatively bargain contract ($30MM over two), he has far more value to a contending team than the Jays.
2. Find a DH that can actually hit. I don’t have too much of a problem with teams who fill their DH slot with aging hitters that rotates annually. I do have a problem with teams with DHs that can’t hit. This is the easiest spot on the Jays roster to improve if they feel that prospect Travis Snyder isn’t ready to take over full-time.

As it is currently constructed, the Jays have no positional players that rate above average and I don’t expect that to change all that much in 2009 no matter what they do. Their corner infield spots are taken up by over-the-hill hitters (Overbay and Rolen) whose main value lies in their defense. If those skills slip soon, they’re in serious trouble. I also don’t foresee their two “big” bats, Wells and Alex Rios, to get any better than they already are since they don’t walk nearly enough. I do like Adam Lind and hope that the Jays give him a regular gig to show what he can do. If they can get value back for Halladay, the Jays will still have a good rotation come 2010, with McGowan and Marcum at the top followed by Purcey and Litsch. If prospects Mills and/or Cecil develop well, then they’ll be very good. But all of that will be for naught unless their lineup actually scores some runs, which is why getting hitters in return for Doc is crucial to their future success.

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