To me it's the difference of hoping for a long shot to pay off (it does happen) and building the foundation of a consistent long term winner like the Cubs have done. The Cubs haven't been perfect (signing Heyward was a head scratching and costly mistake, but they have the money) but they have been patient and mostly stuck to their plan. They have young stars all over the field, have made some shrewd FA signings (some mistakes as well) and still have a reasonably good minor league system that should feed them young talent for several more years. They are going to be a force to deal with for the next 5-6 years. They are not a one or two year wonder.
If you look at a team like Kansas City, they pretty much have to build for the peaks and valleys. They don't have the payroll capacity to scale up with their young talent. So, they will cycle up and down. They are on their way down now.
Teams with virtually unlimited money will try to buy their seat at the top every year. They get knocked out of that position when they make one too many bad investments like getting old all at the same time with players far past their prime but paid like they aren't (AROD, Sabathia, Tex, etc.).
The teams in the middle (Atlanta, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis, etc.) must try to build waves of talent that they can ride to the top and still have those waves wash up every so often to help keep them there. Saying that all the talent will ripen at the same time and the team will magically be good is just not correct and not the point I'm trying to make at all. I'm saying you have to have waves of talent pushing up and the first real wave of talent pushing into Atlanta may start next year and will hopefully continue for several successive years.
I believe that the Braves front office looked into the challenge and could not face it and have now preempted the full rebuild because of the demands of moving into a new park. This will likely lead to a rebuild that is not maximized in it's effectiveness. It could still possibly be good enough, especially if enough new payroll is pumped in that they can buy their way out of mistakes and shortcomings. That's the best case. The middle case is that the rebuild completely falls flat, all the Johns are fired and ownership brings in new management that will do the rebuild right (but it takes 5 more years). The worst case scenario is that the rebuild is just good enough to allow all the John's to keep their jobs, but not good enough to allow the team to move out of baseball purgatory, not ever dead last but not ever good enough to actually win anything.
In what alternate universe can Atlanta be grouped with the Cubs and Cardinals? Those teams have sold out games consistently for years whether they've been competitive or not. Those are quite possibly the two LEAST fickle fanbases in the league.
Cubs' wins, attendance, and draft picks by year...
2008 - 97 wins - 3,300,200 - Brett Jackson (2009)
2009 - 83 wins - 3,168,859 - Hayden Simpson (2010)
2010 - 75 wins - 3,062,973 - Javier Baez (2011)
2011 - 71 wins - 3,017,966 - Albert Almora, Pierce Johnson, Paul Blackburn (2012)
2012 - 61 wins - 2,882,756 - Kris Bryant (2013)
2013 - 66 wins - 2,642,682 - Kyle Schwarber (2014)
2014 - 73 wins - 2,652,113 - Ian Happ (2015)
The last time the Braves drew more fans than the Cubs did in their worst season during that stretch was
2007. The time before that was 2001. They're at just over 1,310,000 this season with 22 home dates left, so it's not inconceivable that they draw less than 1.75 million fans this season WITH Julio and Freeman on the roster. I shudder to think what attendance will look like without either of them even with the new park.
