No, dawgfan. I was hoping we would, but there's one catch with the whole thing.
In order to receive compensation, you have to offer arbitration. Most big free agents won't accept arbitration. If Teixeira has a strong season and hits the free agent market, Atlanta will offer him arbitration. However, last year, with Andruw's terrible season bringing his market value down, it was going to be less likely for him to be swamped with suitors. So offering him arbitration carried a greater risk that he'd accept if he couldn't find a deal he liked. In his case, it would've made sense to do that. Take arbitration, come back for a year and pad the stats for this year's free agency period. The last time someone surprised us by accepting arbitration, Greg Maddux, we had to react suddenly and cut payroll to make room for him. We traded Kevin Millwood to Philadelphia to account for Maddux.
I think we were willing to give up 2 draft picks in order to guarantee that we wouldn't have to do any roster juggling to make room for him.
If we were in the building process, we would've offered arbitration. The picks would've been more valuable to us. However, we're trying to win now, and that's more important.
Also, the 2008 draft class was, at the time, expected to be slightly weak.
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