Mark Bradley thinks the Braves need to make some drastic moves in the offseason:

It's tempting to call this a big offseason for the Braves, tempting until we recall their last offseason. They let Tom Glavine and their prized middle relievers go. They kept Greg Maddux for twice what he was worth. They traded Kevin Millwood for Johnny Estrada. They messed up in ways the Braves have never messed up under John Schuerholz, and still they won their division and matched the Yankees for baseball's best record.

This offseason, however, carries a wrinkle peculiar to the modern game: For the third time in seven offseasons, the Braves are trying to overhaul a National League champion that finished behind them. How exactly is that done?

It's one thing to set your sights on catching the team in front of you. The Phillies just offered an example: They needed a real closer, so they traded for Billy Wagner, who's as real as it gets. But what's the mindset of the team that finished 10 games ahead of Florida only to watch the Marlins celebrate their second World Series title in seven Octobers? Over the course of 162 games, the Braves outhit the champion Marlins .284 to .266 and pitched almost as well -- Florida's ERA was 4.04 against the Braves' 4.10 -- but the NL East winner was clearly a lesser team come the postseason. How exactly does that keep happening?

Answer: You can't. It just happens. And, more and more, winning the World Series just happens. The third tier of playoffs, which arrived in 1995, has skewed the entire grid. The six-month regular season measures a team. October has come to measure a team's luck. A team cannot really gear up for October anymore. A team can only get there and hope.

The Braves keep getting there, but that might cease if they let Gary Sheffield go. Without fanfare, he just had the best offensive season of any Brave since Dale Murphy won his second MVP. He has produced next to nothing in October, but without Sheffield there would have been no October. If the Braves don't re-sign him, it will signal they're more concerned with cutting their payroll than with winning a 13th division title.

Maddux is gone. Javy Lopez is gone. Vinny Castilla is gone, assuming somebody else will sign him. Sheffield is the key to this offseason, just as Glavine was to the last one. If Sheffield re-ups, the Braves will have sufficient cover to make a Big Trade. If Sheffield stays, the guess is that a Jones will go. Andruw Jones is as good as he's apt to get, and Chipper Jones seems to have wearied before our eyes. Either would fetch a handsome return -- a power pitcher, say, or an everyday first baseman.

You can't choreograph luck, but you can try to change it. The Joneses have played together in eight losing postseasons, and their partnership has gone past the point of diminishing returns. Trading one would rearrange the dynamics. Trading one might make the Braves lucky again.

Which of course begs the question: Trade them for what? Yes, if you could trade an All-Star outfielder for an All-Star starting pitcher. Or get a hot young prospect on the cheap by unloading a high priced guy you won't be able to re-sign, anyway. Otherwise, getting rid of one's best players hardly seems a way to go about increasing one's "luck."