“The ’03 Marlins are the only National League team with a payroll in baseball’s bottom third to make it into the playoffs in the past nine years. That’s one out of 36. Those Marlins also are the only team in the past nine years to win the World Series with a payroll that wasn’t in the top half.”

The Braves are not in the bottom third of payroll – yet. However, as MLB salaries continue to escalate and AOL/TW tells Schuerholz to contain costs, the Braves will fall down just by standing pat as the other teams raise their salary payments. Maybe by 2008 the Braves will be in the bottom half of the league in terms of salary and the days of going to the playoffs will just be a fading dream.

I wonder if trading Tim Hudson now would not be a bad move. If the Braves are going to go cheap, they need to get younger and better in the process.

The current rumors involving LaRoche and Davies netting Melky Cabrera, Scott Proctor and Jose Castillo makes me think JS is just phoning it in.
How many 4th OF and MR does one MLB need?

Sometimes I wonder about our magical (possibly mythical) budget constraints. In his book, Scheurholz notes that he was trying to run the Braves on a budget when resigning Jeff Blauser, and Ted Turner walked in and frankly said, “What’s this shit I read about a budget? You want Jeff Blauser, sign him!”

Also, I would like to note it appears like Schuerholz may have been planning for retirement at the end of this season possibly but then got stuck: Hudson, Hampton, Andruw, Smoltz, Giles, Chipper (if he had not restructured) all would have been free agents after 2007 or have massively backloaded contracts hitting the books. Just a theory.