Nick is who he is. We paid market value for him and that's essentially what we are getting. The whole argument, for the most part, was should the Braves be paying market value for players like that. As it turns out it doesn't matter since they aren't close to contending while he's been here. Like Dickey and Colon it simply doesn't matter with where the Braves are as a team. The problem was if the Braves really were contenders in 2017. A contract like Nick's would have hurt the team since they are a mid market team with a limited budget.
Hindsight on the Heyward contract is nonsense really. Anybody can be right in hindsight and nobody saw Heyward declining to this level on offense. It was always his defense that people thought would dramatically decline which gave them pause about a long contract. Anyone saying otherwise is lying. And to me, like always, it's about the process and not the results. Signing a 26 year old FA who is a stud defensively and a good hitter to a big contract isn't a bad process even if the results stink. Trading for a 31 year old OF who is among the worst defensively and average to above average offensively is not a good process. If the team makes good process decisions they will get back to winning even if some of them have bad results.