First baseman Mark Teixeira has gone on record saying that he would like to stick it out with the Atlanta Braves through the rest of this season and make a run at the postseason.

No John Smoltz. No Tim Hudson. Pretty much no Tom Glavine. Yeah, keep dreaming Mark. Use that Georgia Tech education.

The Braves sent a spark of energy through their clubhouse and throughout their fan base when they dealt several prospects for Teixeira and left-handed reliever Ron Mahay. They also struck a deal with Kansas City for Octavio Dotel.

Where did the dumping of numerous prospects get them? Same place as the worst teams in baseball. Home for the postseason.

Perhaps if the Braves had made an effort to keep Dotel after the season, they would be in the hunt this year. Their bullpen has been as terrible as it's ever been. Injuries have taken their toll. Rafael Soriano hasn't been very dependable and may change his last name to DL. Mike Gonzalez is getting healthy after the fact. The experiment with Smoltz back at closer lasted one blown save.

Top to bottom, it's the worse the Atlanta pitching staff has looked in a long time. You can't really blame it on any one specific person since much of the woes have come from the injury bug.

They can greatly help themselves for 2009 and beyond by being sellers at the trade deadline for the first time in two decades.

Mark Teixeira simply must go.

There's no way they'll be able to afford him once he hits the market this offseason. Years of dumping young, cheap talent like Adam Wainwright, Jason Schmidt and Jermaine Dye for rentals such as J.D. Drew, Gary Sheffield and Denny Neagle have taken their toll despite having one of the top developmental minor league systems in baseball.

So, what does .283-20-78 get you on the open market nowadays? Not too much because most of the contenders are set at first and DH.

All fingers are pointing toward Arizona.

Go ahead and offer up Teixeira, some Georgia peaches and a bucket of balls for Max Scherzer, Jarrod Parker and Jamie D'Antona and be done with it.

You've got to get something for a premier slugger like Teixeira. You can't just keep losing talent year after year and not even getting compensatory picks to replace them.