To me that's a ridiculous statement - without the Stewart trade the Braves would STILL have rebuilt their farm system into a top-5ish group, Albies would likely slot into SS, Mallex (who you REALLY LIKE) would be in CF instead of Inciarte and we still could have flipped Shelby for a valuable piece, not as good as Swanson/Inciarte, but with his contract, the year he was coming off and stuff - he still could have fetched something pretty strong.
So you'd still have a very strong farm system, Albies at SS, TD slotting in at 2B hopefully in a couple years and Mallex in center with Shelby still in the fold to flip. How is that on the verge of failing the rebuild?
BTW, without Coppy - the Braves wouldn't have ripped off Dave Stewart, any team in baseball could have traded with the Diamondbacks and ripped them off, but only Coppy did it.
Agreed. The D-Backs deal helped a great deal but there is still a lot of talent in this organization.
If not for the trade then the Bravse would have had a 3-5 year rebuild just like every organization that goes through it.