If you do draft well, that puts you in the position where above average years from Aubrey Huff and Juan Uribe can get you in the playoffs, and then above average weeks from Cody Ross and Edgar Renteria can get you the title.

But you’ll never be in the position to have your “lucky” NRIs, free agents, trade acquisitions, etc. take you from 75 to 90 wins in a season if you don’t have a base to build from or a top-5 payroll.

A MLB team can expect to add 5 WAR per year from their farm system. Over a 6 year period, you may expect to accumulate 30 WAR from your farm. Not enough to break 500. After 6 years, you keep your guys by paying close to FA money, or you let them go. These are all averages, and teams can have bumper crop years and do better, or worse, but consistently this is what most teams expect to get year in and year out.

Perpetual good teams have it harder since they tend to draft lower consistently. An example of an exception is the Red Sox. They have made a living in recent years by letting good players leave via FA and getting compensation and supplementary picks. This has yielded talent like Bard, Ellsbury, Buchholz and Lowrie, while they also had some good drafts from 2002-2005 with their own picks getting Lester, Papelbon and Pedroia. They parted with Duquette era draft picks/int’ FA to get Beckett and Lowell for Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez which paid dividends in 2007 but costly in 2010.

In the pipeline are 4 top picks from letting Wagner and Bay leave, and maybe another 4 picks next year from losing Beltre and Martinez (less what they lose from any Type A FA they sign). Their only big FA signings in recent years have been JD Drew and John Lackey, and even with their farm system, that’s not sustainable. They will either need to be more active in the FA market or part with some prospects (like with Ramirez and Sanchez) to get established players nearing FA and extend them with FA money or face hard times.

So that’s it, you need your farm system to bring up talent every year or to trade it off for established players, and supplement that with FA. Unless you are content being a 500 or lower team that is. You can’t rely entirely on FA or your farm system.

If you sign only affordable and middling FA, and never sign any impact FA, you likely will not see the playoffs too often, and you certainly will not be in the playoffs 7 out of 10 years.

Now, one comment pointed out the Rangers and Rays. Neither team is free of direct or indirect FA and both will may lose impact players to FA reducing playoff hopes in future years unless they sign impact FA.

Rangers. Made playoffs for 1st time in 10 years. Vlad was a FA. Andrus and Feliz were acquired in a trade using Teixiera (soon to be FA) and Mahay (signed as a FA). Darren Oliver-FA, Darren O’Day, waiver pickup. Rich Harden -FA. Cliff Lee (trade, FA to be), Benjie Molina (trade, signed by SFG as FA) . David Murphy (trade, used FA Eric Gagne). Hunter was drafted as supplemental pick for losing signed FA Mark Derosa as a FA

Rays. Made playoffs 2 times in 3 years, but only 2 times in history, and will start losing some young players to FA this year. 2010 team- Carlos Pena-FA, Dan Johnson-FA, Matt Joyce (via trade using Edwin Jackson who in turn was acquired via trade using FA Baez and FA Lance Carter), Gape Kapler-FA, Dan Wheeler acquired in trade using FA Ty Wigginton), Joaquin Benoit-FA, Lance Cormier-FA, Randy Choate-FA

My casual observation says that teams that develop stars and sign roll players tend to be more successful than teams that develop roll players and try to sign stars. Is this wrong?