Atlanta Braves General Manager John Schuerholz let all-star outfielder Gary Sheffield sign with the New York Yankees without much of a fight last offseason, and he virtually opened the clubhouse's exit door for former all-stars Greg Maddux, Javy Lopez and Vinny Castilla.
Schuerholz replaced Sheffield's big bat by trading for outfielder J.D. Drew, who was on the disabled list six times in his five seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals. Schuerholz pegged former Ivy League quarterback Mark DeRosa to replace Castilla at third base, and minor league catcher Johnny Estrada to fill Lopez's spot behind home plate.
Schuerholz's choices to replace starting pitchers Shane Reynolds and Maddux, a four-time Cy Young Award winner who won at least 15 games in each of his 11 seasons with the Braves, were even bigger gambles. The team signed Texas Rangers starter John Thompson, who had never won more than 14 games in a season, and elevated Jaret Wright from the bullpen. He hadn't won more than four games in each of the previous four seasons and had been plagued by arm injuries.
"That situation would have never happened eight or 10 years ago," third baseman Chipper Jones said, of the veteran players' mass exodus from Atlanta.
Schuerholz, the architect of Braves teams that have won a remarkable 12 National League East titles in a row, faced a daunting mandate from AOL Time Warner executives during the offseason: Trim $15 million from the team's $95 million payroll. So Schuerholz went bargain hunting. He traded for Drew, who had one year left on a contract that paid him about $4.2 million -- almost one-third of the $12 million the Yankees are paying Sheffield this year. Thompson and Wright are costing the Braves about $4.35 million this season, a little more than half of the $8 million the Cubs are paying the 38-year-old Maddux.
Early in the season, the Braves played like a makeshift squad with a small-market payroll. They found themselves six games under .500 and trailing the Philadelphia Phillies by 6 1/2 games in the NL East on June 23.
"Shoot, there isn't a guy here, if you gave a lie detector test that could say he didn't have doubts about this team," said closer John Smoltz, the only holdover from the team that started the 12-year division championship run in 1991.
But the Braves won 13 of their last 17 games before the July 13 All-Star Game, and caught the first-place Phillies with an 8-0 victory over the Montreal Expos in their next game. The Braves now have a commanding eight-game lead over the Phillies in the division.
"It's been a lot of fun," Drew said. "We've enjoyed it."
Despite having a payroll more than $10 million less than the Phillies, more than $40 million less than the Boston Red Sox and more than $100 million less than the Yankees, the Braves have almost ensured a 13th consecutive postseason with fewer than 50 regular season games to go.
"The challenge this year was almost as dramatic as what we faced in 1991, when we went from worst to first," Schuerholz said. "When we lost so many key players, a lot of the so-called observers of the game said, 'No chance.' We had a writer here in town that wrote us off in the second week of the season. He said, 'Scratch the Braves off your playoff list' -- in the second week of the season. So it would be more gratifying, not to tell somebody we told you so, but there's a proud legacy that's in place here."
Even the most ardent Braves fans couldn't have foreseen that legacy continuing this season. The Braves' roster included 10 new players, a rebuilt bullpen and a starting rotation that was the team's most suspect in more than a decade. The Braves are platooning 25-year-old rookie Charles Thomas in left field, after DeRosa flopped and Jones moved from left to third base to help his ailing right hamstring. Their platoon at first base includes 24-year-old rookie Adam LaRoche and 46-year-old Julio Franco. When second baseman Marcus Giles missed more than 50 games with a fractured clavicle in May, June and July, rookie Nick Green, who grew up in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, batted .280 and hit three homers that either tied or won games.
"The guys off the bench gave us a chance and kept us afloat," Manager Bobby Cox said.
The starting pitching, the foundation of the franchise in Schuerholz's 13 years, has been even more surprising. Wright, who won 12 games for Cleveland in 1998 but only 17 in his next five seasons combined, is 11-5 with a 2.95 ERA. He has won his last nine games and hasn't lost since May 22. In July, Wright and starters Russ Ortiz and Mike Hampton combined to go 14-0 with a 1.87 ERA. The Braves' bullpen -- which features Cubs castoffs Antonio Alfonseca and Juan Cruz and career minor leaguer Kevin Gryboski -- had a 2.00 ERA in more than 67 innings in July and has allowed only seven earned runs this month going into Sunday night's game.
"A lot of guys have pitched in to get us where we're at right now," Wright said. "We just need to keep it going."
Schuerholz gives much of the credit to Cox, who is 28 victories shy of winning 2,000 games.
"He has proven time and time again he can take sort of a mixture of new guys and make a team out of them as well, if not better, than any manager in baseball," Schuerholz said. "He's proven it year after year after year."