Because a team like the Braves with a $100M-$120M payroll can approach team building in 1 of 2 ways:
1. Cycle between 90+ win and 75 win seasons as they produce core players and lose them to FA, rebuild, and repeat every 5-ish years.
2. Continuously sell off players for max value and continually field ~85 win teams that have playoff aspirations every year.
Given the fact that the playoffs are largely a crap shoot, I would prefer to take an 85 win team into the playoffs every year, rather than taking a 90+ win team into the playoffs for 2-3 years and then miss the playoffs entirely for 2-3 years during a rebuild.
Teams like the Yankees, Dodgers and Cubs don't have to concern themselves with losing their core players and falling into a 70 win period during which they rebuild. The Yankees were "rebuilding" last year and still won 84 games while constructing a Top 3 farm system. Their vastly superior resources allow them to stay around the 85 win mark consistently by replacing core players via FA if needed. The Braves had to lose 90+ games for 2 seasons while they rebuilt their farm, and they are still dreaming about winning 84 games...which the Yankees did in a rebuilding year.
The revenue disparity in MLB creates different team building realities for teams all along the financial spectrum. The Braves need to realize where they are on that spectrum, and plan accordingly.
There is a third, albeit more risky option: Rebuild in such a way as to attempt to establish a dynastic period based upon waves of really cheap in-house young talent, rounded out with a sprinkling of Star talent (year after year after year 90+ win teams and in the hunt every year). This is the "change the culture and market position rebuild." It's really what happened with the Braves in the early 90's and what is happening with the Cubs now. This is the approach that takes attendance for the Braves from ~2M per year into the 3.5M range and changes the internal outlook on payroll (now supported by revenues) from mid-market to large market.
Market size is largely a function of ownership commitment. Atlanta alone is easily one of the top 10 MSA in the US. When you add in the surrounding area that is by default Braves territory (Central and East Tenn, SC and much of NC, AL, MS, N Florida), the market size is tremendous. If Liberty is OK with what they get with the team viewed, positioned and funded as a mid market team then it will stay a mid market team. But, there is a path to large market revenue, even with the middle of the pack TV package.
I can see the Braves springing for a big ticket FA
if it fills the right hole.
For instance, let's say the Braves progress relatively well over the next couple of years and are on the brink of contention going into 2019 but they badly need more offense and have a hole at 3B (Freeman has continued to play at second half 2016 levels). Attendance is creaping near 3M.
I could see the Braves making an aggressive move on Machado, even if it costs $30+M per year (Call it 7 years $250M) or more because it would (should) be supportable within the framework of the team
at that time.
You could see a team
like: CF Inciarte $5M, 2B Albies (cheap), SS Swanson (pretty cheap but not as cheap as he should be, thanks 2016), 1B Freeman $21M, 3B Machado $35M, LF Michael Brantley ~$15M (or someone like him), RF Acuna cheap and C
That looks like a pretty strong line-up and Brantley (or whoever) goes away with Maitan taking over LF in 2020.
But, to do that, you would need a lot of the young pitching to work out and perform cheaply. If you have $10M in starters 2-5 and $10M in the pen and $5M in the bench you would have $25M SP/RP/Bench, $5M Inciarte, $21M Freeman, $35M Machado, $15M Brantley, $10M Catcher,, $10M balance of team= $121M. If the budget is, by then, in the $150M range, you have about $30M left over to look for a top of the rotation starter (but you can't be paying this guy $30M at the end of his career when he isn't worth it).
Then it becomes a balancing game in years 2020 and beyond. Freeman's $22M comes off the board after 2021 and the Braves shouldn't be offering him a new long term deal even if his play is still good. Brantley (or whoever) goes away, replaced by Maitan, etc. So, that $35M+ commitment to a FA like Machado
could be managed, even without the Braves having a top five payroll in baseball.
What you can't have is catastrophic injury to multiple core players who are making money not to play; complete misses in the farm system despite significantly lower draft position y/y; bad chemistry where the talent and cost is there but the performance is not; significant philosophical changes that turn your process on end; you can't be sentimental - signing a 31-32 YO Freedie Freeman to a new long term deal for 7 years, $210M is where you commit franchise suicide, no matter how good or popular FF has been.
