What if the Braves had not traded Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz?

Thirty-three years after a trade considered the best ever for the Braves (and possibly the worst for the Detroit Tigers) and 19 years after the Braves last won a postseason series, now seems a good time to revisit the deal and ask: What if the Braves had not traded for a young pitching prospect named John Smoltz in August 1987?

Bobby Cox, the Braves’ general manager at that time, traded 36-year-old pitcher Doyle Alexander to Detroit for Smoltz, 20, who had struggled that year in Double A.

Had they not done it, the Braves would’ve never had the Big Three first-ballot Hall of Famers in Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. Their run of 14 consecutive division titles beginning in 1991 and five World Series appearances in the 1990s? Maybe none of that occurs.

“It’s kind of weird how stuff happens,” Maddux said. “You always kind of wonder about things like that.”

The Big Three pitchers formed the veritable backbone for the franchise during its unprecedented run of division titles. There is no Smoltz in Atlanta if not for the trade, and later there is perhaps no Maddux, who signed as a free agent after the Braves’ second straight World Series appearance in 1992.

“At that time, I guess the other big wheel so to speak was (Steve) Avery,” said Glavine, a 1984 Braves draft pick who debuted in 1987, had 17 losses and a 4.56 ERA in 1988 but three years later was a 20-game winner and the 1991 NL Cy Young Award winner. “Knowing the Braves, I certainly think they would have tried to address getting another guy if they felt like they needed it. Maybe not with someone of a Smoltz caliber.”

Smoltz became the second-winningest postseason pitcher in history and had the distinction of being the only player with the Braves throughout the run of division titles in every completed season from 1991 through 2005. He spent an unforgettable decade in that span as teammates with Maddux and Glavine.

“The older I get, the better it was,” said Maddux, a Braves pitcher for 11 seasons through 2003, winning the last three of his four consecutive NL Cy Young Awards after going to Atlanta as a free agent before the 1993 season. He signed with them after Smoltz and Glavine began to talk him into it at the 1992 All-Star Game when he was in the final year of his contract with the Chicago Cubs.

“You know, you’re so involved in your career and your next game and what you have to do in the moment,” Maddux said. “Once you get out of the game, and you sit back and look back on it, those times were a lot more special than I thought they were, you know? The older you get, the more you appreciate it.”

Nevermind the Big Three, there might not have been even two future Hall of Famers in the rotation if Smoltz wasn’t traded to Atlanta.

Without Smoltz emerging as a strong No. 2 behind Glavine — Smoltz was 15-12 with a 2.85 ERA in 1992 and a postseason beast in helping the Braves advance to their second consecutive World Series — the Braves’ free-agent pitch to Maddux that year wouldn’t have packed as much punch without Smoltz.

Maddux wanted to go where he could win a World Series and ultimately signed a five-year, $28 million contract with the Braves. It was the largest guaranteed contract for a pitcher at that time but less than what the New York Yankees offered.

“I did talk to Smoltz and Glav at the All-Star break that year,” Maddux said this week from his home in Las Vegas. “I was asking them about the organization and Bobby Cox and (pitching coach Leo Mazzone) and all that stuff. And I know that Glav and Smoltzy were the two that told me, ‘Yeah, it’s awesome playing here. This is a good place, and it’s great for pitchers.’

“Back then there were two types of teams: There were teams that tried to beat you 8-7, and there were teams that loved pitching and tried to win 3-2. And I think Bobby Cox and Atlanta back then, they were trying to win 3-2, and they liked the pitchers. And they were real good about letting us do our own thing.”

Smoltz said, “With that (Alexander) trade and with the development of our team, I like to think that us learning how to pitch, getting to that level and being pretty good, obviously was the reason why it was attractive to get Greg. So yeah, I don’t think that’s a stretch at all (to say Maddux wouldn’t have been a Brave without the trade). I mean, there could have been someone that could’ve come on to the scene. But I don’t see any other way that my career gets to the point that it did without that trade.”

Maddux was asked if the scenario for him in the winter of 1992 might have been different if the Braves didn’t have the young gun with the power arm and the mustache, Smoltz, to go with the gentleman lefty Glavine, a changeup and control specialist.

“Without Smoltzy? Wow, that’s a tough question. I never really had to think about that,” Maddux said. “You know, they still had Glav and Kent Mercker and (Steve) Avery and Pete Smith. They still had a pretty good team.”

Chipper Jones had been selected with the first overall pick of the 1990 June draft. The Golden Boy made his major-league debut as a September 1993 call-up, as Maddux was putting the finishing touches on a 20-win season in which he posted a 2.36 ERA in a majors-leading 267 innings on the way to his second straight Cy Young Award and first with the Braves.

Glavine was 22-6 with a 3.20 ERA in 239 1/3 innings during the 1993 season and collected his third consecutive top-three Cy Young finish, and Smoltz had 15 wins and a 3.62 ERA in 243 2/3 innings. The Big Three were already fully formed and something to behold.

Asked the same question — would the Braves have had enough to lure Maddux without Smoltz on the team — Jones thought for a moment.

“If it had just been Glav and maybe Ave (Steve Avery) and … I don’t know,” Jones said. “I still think we had the nucleus and good pitching, good manager, good management. I certainly think John Smoltz being here probably put us over the hump as far as the Greg Maddux decision. But I can’t say for certain that Greg would have been a New York kind of guy. I think much like myself, that Atlanta was a good fit for him. Because he didn’t have the media scrutiny day in, day out, start after start, like he would have had in the Big Apple. I like to think that he would have come here anyway.”

Glavine said, “My sentiment is similar to that. I still think we would have been pretty good. And I would say that, more than anything else, Greg is not a New York type of guy. So I think in the end we probably would have stood the best chance of signing him. Look, to some extent, when you’re a free agent, you always want the Yankees in the mix. You know? So, he might have just been doing that.”

Maddux circled back to, “Without Smoltzy, who knows? Who knows what would have happened? I’m glad he was there, I know that.”

That leads to another aspect of Smoltz and the Braves: Even if they had managed to sign Maddux that summer without Smoltz on the team, would they have been able to re-sign Maddux and keep him in Atlanta for 11 seasons? A big part of the appeal for Maddux and Glavine, as well as plenty of other pitchers during that span with the Braves, was golf.

Specifically, it was daily golf with Smoltz every afternoon at spring training outside Orlando and throughout the season on the road, where Smoltz, a scratch golfer, was legendary for organizing daily golf excursions to some of the country’s most exclusive courses. Maddux and Glavine were passionate golfers, too, and joined Smoltz for early morning rides via limousine or rental car — always driven by Smoltz — to posh golf courses in and around every city where the Braves played. Year after year.

Smoltz and Glavine played any day they weren’t starting, while Maddux skipped the day before and day of starts. They invited other pitchers to fill out their foursome on game days, and Jones usually was part of the group on off days on the road. They played early enough that they were back at the hotel between noon and 1 p.m. and to the ballpark in time for lunch and their pregame workouts.

Cox didn’t just condone their golf outings, he encouraged it. The manager saw how loose it kept them all and the relationships that they and other Braves built spending hours together on the course, talking baseball and life.

Don’t underestimate the part those Smoltz-organized outings played in keeping the Big Three together so long.

“Smoltzy, obviously he was a very good pitcher,” Maddux said. “But he was a great golf coordinator. And he made it fun. He was rarely in a bad mood, always had a good attitude, always came to the ballpark and joked around, kidded around. And at the same time, he was serious about being as good of a pitcher as he could be. For me personally, it was great having him on the team.”

Glavine said if Smoltz hadn’t been on the team or left, it likely would have fallen to him to try organizing golf outings since Maddux wouldn’t have done it. Jones said Smoltz had a gift for it, the personality to talk the Braves onto any course, even before they all were famous and began getting invited by golf courses to play.

“Oh, he was fantastic at it,” Glavine said, agreeing with Jones’ assessment. “I was never good at the ‘Hey, this is Tom Glavine from the Braves, can we come play golf?’ They’d be like, ‘Who?’ Smoltzy was always good at that. I mean, look, he was always a pretty outgoing individual anyway, so that was his cup of tea.”

Their time on the golf course together was part of the bonding of the three pitchers, who to this day play together in celebrity golf tournaments annually and stay in touch via text and phone calls. As teammates, they genuinely relished being together on and off the field.

“Oh, we did,” Glavine said. “I’m not speaking for them, but I would venture to say they’ve all said similar things. The fact that we were able to do what we did on the baseball field and play for all those good teams and do all that stuff and on top of that have the fun that we had off of the field? I mean, you couldn’t have asked for a better situation. You had three guys that obviously all had the passion for playing golf, but we all got along really well, which is saying something.

“I mean, you’ve seen it. You’ve seen guys with egos and the whole nine yards. We didn’t have that. And it was … I don’t want to say we had just as much off the field as we did on, but it was pretty darn close. We had some pretty special off days, that’s for sure.”

Maddux said, “We had a blast off the field. The golf and also the plane rides, the kangaroo courts and all that stuff. We had fun. We definitely had fun winning, but we also had fun when we weren’t playing.”

Their success together, of course, never could have been predicted at the time Smoltz was traded to the Braves. Glavine was still in the Braves’ minor-league system, and Maddux was in the minors with the Cubs.

The immediate effects of the Smoltz-Alexander trade were Glavine’s promotion to the majors at age 21 to take over Alexander’s rotation spot for a Braves team on its way to losing 92 games under manager Chuck Tanner. Smoltz said he, too, arrived in the majors earlier with the losing Braves than if he had been with the Tigers.

“It was pretty unique,” Smoltz said. “Doyle Alexander wouldn’t have been there much longer. But by him leaving and creating more room for younger pitchers, the people who were (blocking prospects) for the farm system that was getting built up by Bobby, were slowly fading away. I think of all the time of wanting to pitch for my hometown (Detroit) team, struggling mightily without any pitching coaches there. I always believed I would have made it had I not got traded, but I don’t believe there was any time frame that was going to allow me to make headway in a Detroit veteran-laden pitching staff.

“So it’s amazing to think of the dominoes that really did allow the club to do certain things because of the base of pitching that we created. I don’t think any of the dominoes would have fallen the way they did. I think of what the trade did for me, but Glav would always remind me that it got him a spot. He went up (to majors) quicker. It helped him and started an opportunity for me, I’m talking maybe two years earlier than I would have had in Detroit.”

Like Glavine, Smoltz was 21 when debuted in July 1988 with a 106-loss Braves team. He was 2-7 with a 5.48 ERA in 12 starts that year, then 12-11 with a 2.94 ERA in his first full season in 1989, although just 1-5 with a 4.42 ERA after the All-Star break. The erratic course continued into the fateful 1991 season when Smoltz was 2-11 with a 5.16 ERA at the All-Star break, but Cox, back managing the team, told Smoltz he believed in him and was sticking with him, regardless of what others thought.

Smoltz went 12-2 with a 2.63 ERA in 18 starts after the break.

Without Smoltz, the Braves might not have been the so-called Team of the ’90s. They certainly wouldn’t have had the riveting Game 7 matchup in the 1991 World Series that capped their worst-to-first season.

In that October surprise of 1991, Smoltz, in his first postseason, dueled on a memorable night with Minnesota’s Jack Morris, who was in his 15th season and coincidentally his first with any team other than the Tigers. Smoltz, a Michigan native, had long admired Morris.

Morris won that duel and was the MVP of the Series, but Smoltz boldly had presented the template for his career. He was an extremely driven, tough competitor who hated leaving any big game unless he was hurt or the Braves had a lead — and sometimes even if he was hurt and they were ahead. His influence on a generation of Braves cannot be overstated.

Many who played with or against Michael Jordan say the NBA great was the most competitive athlete ever. Those who played with Smoltz have similar thoughts.

“Times ten,” Jones said of Smoltz as the competitive athlete he knew. “As far as baseball players go, times ten. I mean, he’s never going to give up. If you played golf against him, if you played backgammon against him, if you played rummy against him, Ping-Pong, you knew. He’s going to play until he gets the best of you. Until time runs out or he gets the best of you, he’s going to play.

“Eventually I’m going to say ‘uncle’ at some point, after hours and hours. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Smoltzy yell ‘uncle.’ I mean, some of the offseason basketball games that we played … and obviously golf, that goes without saying. He knows he’s better than you, that if he keeps you out there long enough — he’s like the casino in Vegas; if they keep you there long enough, they’re going to get you.”

The Tigers never got to see Smoltz’s talent and competitiveness all come together. He was their 22nd-round draft pick in 1985 and had gone 4-10 with a 5.68 ERA in Double A in 1987 before the Tigers agreed to send him to the Braves in exchange for Alexander, who was in the 17th season of a 19-year career. Alexander had finished sixth in the Cy Young Award balloting two years before but was 5-10 with a 4.13 ERA in 16 starts for the Braves in 1987 before they shipped him to Detroit.

The Tigers were in a close playoff race and in need of a proven starter. While most Tigers fans long decried the Smoltz-Alexander trade in hindsight, others said it was actually one of the better trades Detroit made because it accomplished what it was supposed to: Alexander went 9-0 with a 1.53 ERA in 11 regular-season starts for the Tigers, helping them finish ahead of Toronto and New York for the AL East title.

Also, because the Tigers were so bad during the 1990s, Smoltz couldn’t have done much to make a difference in a moribund decade. The Tigers finished no better than third in the division from 1992 through 2005.

Smoltz most certainly made a difference with the Braves, with whom he spent 20 years — 19 seasons plus one recovering from Tommy John surgery — and recorded 210 of his 213 wins and all of his 154 career saves. He’s the only pitcher in history to record at least 200 wins and 150 saves, including 24 wins and the Cy Young Award in 1996.

He had a majors-leading and then-NL record 55 saves in 2002, the first of his three full seasons as a closer. After initially moving to the bullpen at midseason in 2001 when his surgically repaired elbow was hurting, Smoltz stayed there in 2002, he said, because he wanted to be the closer when Maddux and Glavine each got their 300th wins.

But Glavine left for the New York Mets a year later, and Maddux returned to the Cubs two years later.

“The only reason I went to the ‘pen, to be honest, besides helping the team, was I was going to save their 300th games,” Smoltz said.  “And then they both left. And I was left in the ‘pen by myself. And that was kind of a rough spot, to be honest. It was like, ‘Well, shoot, I didn’t see this coming. And I’m not going to be able to save their 300th games.’ How cool would that have been?

“Eventually I got back to the starting rotation, but that was a weird place (in the interim): My two buddies are starting and doing what they want to do, and I’m in the bullpen, so I’m not really hanging with them anymore. That was a big kind of culture shock for me. We could still play golf together, but the other stuff — it’s not like we’re hanging in the dugout (with Smoltz in the bullpen) while the game’s going on.”

Smoltz moved back to the rotation in 2005, the lone holdover of the Big Three, and proceeded to go 44-24 with a 3.22 ERA in 100 starts during his age 38-40 seasons. He also picked up his 15th and final postseason win in 2005 in his final postseason start, allowing one hit in seven scoreless innings against Houston in a Division Series game, the only Braves win in that series against the eventual NL champions.

Smoltz did that while pitching with a throbbing shoulder that doctors said was so damaged, it likely would have prevented him from pitching if the Braves had advanced. He finished his career with a 15-4 record and four saves in 41 postseason games, including 27 starts, and had a record 199 strikeouts in 209 postseason innings until Justin Verlander passed him with 205.

In his final season with the Braves in 2008, Smoltz started out with a 2.57 ERA through six games. But at that point, recurring shoulder issues ended his season and required surgery, and the team didn’t make much effort to re-sign him for an age-42 season, although he was determined to keep pitching.

He spent a difficult 2009 season with Boston and St. Louis before retiring a year after Maddux and Glavine did. His two pals and Cox, all inducted in the Hall of Fame Class of 2014, were seated behind Smoltz on the stage at Cooperstown with the other Hall of Famers when Smoltz was inducted in 2015.

The Big Three were still together, and thousands of Braves fans were chanting on the lawn at Cooperstown.

If not for Doyle Alexander being needed in a playoff race 27 years earlier, the script surely would’ve been quite different.

(Photo: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)

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