According to David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Braves are interested in Rockies reliever Brian Fuentes. However, they don’t want to take on his entire salary.
Fuentes earned $3.5MM in 2007, and will get a raise in his last year before free agency. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him up around $5MM for 2008. That’s the price of a good setup man these days.
Mike Gonzalez was supposed to be the Braves’ late-inning southpaw reliever, but he’ll probably be out until June due to Tommy John surgery. It seems the Rockies’ asking price is steep for a year of Fuentes – they wanted Aaron Heilman and then some from the Mets, and Jed Lowrie from the Red Sox.