It's hard to believe, but the Atlanta Braves traded for Mike Hampton before the 2003 season -- he's been a Brave for six years... well, technically it's been six years. We forget that for the first three years (what I like to refer to as "the healthy years") Hampton was one of the best bargains in baseball for the Braves, as they were only paying him $2 million or less from 2003 to 2005. In fact, when the Florida Marlins won the World Series in 2003, Mike Hampton was their second highest paid player (and he didn't even play for them).

The sad reality of Mike Hampton's tenure in Atlanta, is that the injuries happened right when he was finding his ace material in 2005, and didn't let up until... well, they may still be a factor, but no longer our concern.

The Braves have said in the past that they spread out the money they owed Hampton over the six years they had him, but since we aren't privy to the team's exact accounting, and we didn't find out that they spread out the payments over six years until after Hampton got injured the second time, I take that admission with a grain of salt. So while Hampton was a bargain to begin with, his contract occupied valuable payroll space the last three years.

Beyond just being money on paper (even if much of it was covered by insurance), it was money the team was reluctant to spend on anyone else. So the bottom line is that the money owed Mike Hampton in the final three years of his tenure with the Braves ($13.5M, $14.5M, and $15M) was money we could have spent on someone else, but couldn't in case Hampton was healthy and we had to pay him.

Remember too that Colorado paid $49 million and Florida ponied up $23.5 million of Hampton's salary and signing bonus and buyout... in fact, Colorado is still paying Hampton, and will continue to pay Hampton his deferred signing bonus until 2018 -- at least the Braves no longer have that kind of obligation to him.

At the time of the Hampton trade it was considered a masterstroke. One of John Schuerholz's greatest trades. We acquire a former ace, one who most everyone considered only temporarily damaged by the high altitude of Coors Field, we get the other two teams in the trade to pick up more than half of his remaining salary, and all we have to give up is a reliever with an attitude problem (Tim Spooneybarger) and an undrafted organizational arm (Ryan Baker) -- both of whom never amounted to anything in professional baseball.

It may have gone down at the best trade Schuerholz ever made if Hampton never got injured, but injury is always a risk and one shouldn't fault Schuerholz or Hampton for the failings of a ligament in the pitcher's elbow. The ugly truth after the fact is that the Braves paid Hampton $571,000 per start, and $1,386,000 per win when he was in Atlanta. It was perhaps the second-worst unfortunate fleecing of the Braves payroll since Nick Esasky got dizzy.

The underlying reality for the Braves that Mike Hampton's injury brings to the surface, is that his disabilitude and that of several other's in recent years, is likely luck catching up with the Braves. For the majority of our 14-year run of division titles, at least three and mostly four of our starting pitchers were toeing the mound for around 30 starts each year (or the strike-shortened equivalent of 30 starts). It has only been in the last four years that the majority of our starting pitchers didn't make at least 30 starts, with last year being the worst as only one of our starting pitchers went to the mound 30 times.

This, I suppose, is what this off-season is, or should be, all about. Perhaps it's not just about getting guys who should be starting 30 games, but that seems like the place where we should begin. We've seen the trickle down effect of starters not making consitent starts and reaching that 200 inning mark. The bullpen gets overused. Minor leaguers, who may not be ready, are called up to fill in for long periods of time. Minor league four-A pitchers are given multiple starts; and the list goes on.

Somehow the Braves need to return to that place where their stable of starting pitchers is the cornerstone of their success. And because we need more than one, and maybe even more than two of these guys, I wonder how wise it is to spend so much on just one of them. If Mike Hampton taught us anything, it should probably be that big long-term contracts for pitchers are a bad idea, whether we do the signing or we trade for a pitcher with an already established long term contract.