I know that some of you have very high hopes for any number of our pitching prospects, but the harsh truth is that none of them (including the younsters already in the major leagues) projects to be an ace of a staff at the moment.  This offseason has served to highlight the fact that our self-imposed budget restraints and/or the nature of the free agent market in the sport will make it impossible for us to acquire an ace via free agency.  Furthermore, we do not have the luxury of time (Smoltz will retire sooner rather than later and both Hampton and Hudson have not lived up to our expectations or our needs AND will hit free agency again before the turn of the decade) to address this problem via the draft.  That leaves us with a familiar and yet difficult route to follow in order to fill this void: trade.  

In this respect, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Not only do we have a solid prospect set to take their place at every single position on the field in Atlanta by 2010, we actually have a surplus at some spots.  In fact, we have a number of prospects that either play positions already occupied by extremely young stars at the major league level (Salty) and some others where we have multiple prospects of similar ability (shortstop).  I know that some of these guys can be moved to other positions in order to improve the overall quality of our future line-up, but I think we would be better served by trading them so as to acquire that elusive top-shelf pitching prospect.  

We could go for the gold by dealing either Elvis Andrus or Jarrod Saltalamacchia, or we could hope to convince someone out there to part with a young, stud arm in exchange for a deep package including, but not limited to Yunel Escobar, Chase Fontaine, Kala Ka-aihue, Scott Thorman (this is assuming that if we keep Salty, we'd move him to 1B) and/or any of our pitching prospects.  

Whatever the decision, the cost will be high, but it won't compare to the difficulty of going about this problem any other way or ignoring it.  It's one hole, but it's certainly not just another hole.  A potential ace or two is a critical component to the future success of any ballclub that's dealing with budget constraints and we don't have one.  I sincerely hope we address this sooner rather than later.  

Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Ben Sheets and C.C. Sabathia are all set to become free agents following the 2008 season.  If we could snag one of those guys (I've always liked the idea of Peavy returning to his home town to pitch for the Braves) to put at the top of our rotation along with Harrison, James, Reyes and Davies/Lerew (all of whom should be ready and still udner our control by then) we'd be in awfully good shape.  All of our current major contracts (except for Hudson and banking on the retirements of Smoltz and Chipper) would be off the books by that offseason, so we definitely could make a push for one of those aces.  Our lineup would be young, but solid and cheap and the backend of our bullpen will still be strong (probably Soriano/Gonzalez closing with Devine setting up) so it's all good, actually.  Thoughts?