Figured this would be the best place to put this
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/harveys-struggles-continue/
The Braves in 5 years.
As has been said a million times, there are two truths in building around young pitching:
1) There is obvious risk, as the likelihood of injury is greater.
2) You do have to have pitchers, and good ones, to field a roster and compete.
So knowing these two things, you have two options: ignore pitching and build around hitting, leaving yourself with work to do later to find that pitching. Or get a lot of pitching in the hopes that as some get injured and fall by the wayside, you can fill in with more young pitching. Because we don't have the resources that others do to go pay for already established pitching, it's certainly not a given that stockpiling young pitching is a dumb strategy for us.
The Cubs built largely around hitting, and they are the example everyone uses. But a couple things are important to point out - one, they were somewhat lucky in that when they picked at the top of the draft, there were big-time college hitters available to them. We have not yet had that option. And two, they were somewhat lucky in their pitching last year. You can call it great scouting if you want, but most who fawn over hitters rather than pitchers agree that there really is no such thing, there are just odds. And the odds of guys like Arrieta and Hendricks turning into studs were not great. They also have the money to go pay for a guy like Lester.
So were they unable to spend a ton on a TOR starter, and had they not gotten lucky with Arrieta and Hendricks, they would have been in a pretty tough spot last year and almost certainly would not have been prepared to win a WS title.
