Immediate reactions can be telling.

This is how Philadelphia pitching coach Joe Kerrigan responded to the news that the Phillies had traded for Kevin Millwood: "Yeah, right.''

You can't blame him for being skeptical. Any other winter, this would have been a $100 bill on the floor attached to an invisible string, certain to be yanked away as you bent over to pick it up. But this is the season where nothing seems out of the question for National League contenders.

	Greg Maddux will lead a new-look Braves starting rotation in 2003.

Two NL teams have gone to the playoffs in each of the last three seasons -- the Atlanta Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals. They will face a serious, multi-headed threat to their superiority in 2003.

While American League teams have done little more than kick tires, with the Yankees' signing of Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui the most significant transaction to date, the NL has seen tremendous change, generally for the better.

All-Stars Jim Thome, Cliff Floyd and Ray Durham have left the AL to join the league that already had the best box-office attractions -- Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and Greg Maddux -- as well as the superior cast of rising stars -- Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman, Mark Prior, Roy Oswalt and Josh Beckett.

Philadelphia, the New York Mets and Houston appear to have improved themselves significantly. It is worth noting that the Phillies and Mets have made gains at the expense of the Braves.

By allowing both Maddux and Tom Glavine to reach free agency at a time when the sport is in an economic downturn, Atlanta GM John Schuerholz put the elements into motion for a stunning explosion of possibilities. It ended badly for the Braves, who have seen two of their top three starters move elsewhere as aces for the teams chasing them.

While Schuerholz says his scouts had their eyes on switch-hitting catcher Johnny Estrada for a long time, it's arguable that he would have been better off non-tendering Millwood -- in the hope that he would sign with someone out of the division, if not the league -- than dealing him for the Philadelphia prospect.

Millwood, 28, is going to the Phillies with a head of steam. After a shaky first six weeks in 2002, he went 16-3 with a 2.63 ERA in his last 25 starts.

Phillies manager Larry Bowa says Millwood had the best pure stuff on the Braves' pitching staff. That's nothing new. But Maddux believes Millwood has finally grasped how to harness the potential that allowed him to win 17 games when he was 23 and 18 when he was 24.

"He understands himself as a pitcher more than ever,'' Maddux said before last Friday's trade. "Put it this way: Any team that has him will be lucky to have him ... I really thought he turned a corner last year. I thought for the first time in his career, he actually had a game plan and was pitching good games instead of throwing games with a lot of good pitches.''

If you want to predict a team's success, the starting rotation might be the best place to begin. While no one saw a championship coming for Anaheim, it was no surprise that the Angels were competitive. After all, they were the only team in the majors that went to spring training with five pitchers who had worked at least 190 innings in 30-plus starts the previous season.

There were 55 starters who met those qualifications last season. No team currently has more than three of them.

Four of the seven teams that have a trio of 30/190 starters reside in the NL East -- Atlanta (Maddux, Paul Byrd and Russ Ortiz), Philadelphia (Millwood, Vicente Padilla and Randy Wolf), the Mets (Glavine, Al Leiter and Pedro Astacio) and, for the moment, Montreal (Bartolo Colon, Javier Vazquez and Tomo Ohka).

The only other teams that fit this criteria are Oakland, Toronto and the White Sox. Five qualifiers remain available on the free-agent market: Chuck Finley, Kenny Rogers, Jeff Suppan, Ismael Valdes and Paul Wilson.

When the 2002 season ended, Atlanta and Montreal were the only NL East teams with three 30/190 starters. The Mets served notice of their seriousness about bouncing back from a 75-86 season by winning the bidding war for Glavine, who will be 37 by the start of the 2003 season but has shown no signs of slowing down. His 2.96 ERA last season ranked behind only Randy Johnson and Maddux in the NL.

The Mets, who still face questions on the left side of the infield after trading Rey Ordonez and losing Edgardo Alfonzo to San Francisco, signed Floyd to supplement a lineup that already included Roberto Alomar, Mike Piazza, Mo Vaughn and Jeromy Burnitz, the latter a reasonable candidate for a major comeback season. But it's the swagger of their pitching staff that has changed the most.

In addition to Glavine, they added lefty reliever Mike Stanton. Both Glavine and Stanton are the only two major-league pitchers who have been in the playoffs every year since 1991.

"It really puts an exclamation point on our pitching staff,'' Mets GM Steve Phillips said of signing the 35-year-old Stanton, who had been widely pursued. "To get a guy like this who has been in postseason play so many consecutive years, along with a Tom Glavine, just adds a feeling to our clubhouse we think is necessary.''

By landing Jeff Kent on the rebound, Houston added another run-producing bat it feels is necessary to overthrow the Cardinals.

	Jeff Kent Second baseman Houston Astros Profile
	2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM AB R HR RBI AVG 152 623 102 37 108 .313

"As you know, our whole focus is to be a champion, and to be a champion you have to get to the World Series,'' Astros owner Drayton McLane said. "We think Jeff Kent gives us that extra edge, and we think he's going to help us tremendously. ... He had several options that were as good or better, but he studied this as well and wants to be a Houston Astro.''

Kent, who joins Sosa and Chipper Jones as one of only three hitters who has driven in at least 100 runs in each of the last six seasons, joins Jeff Bagwell, Lance Berkman and Craig Biggio in a lineup with tremendous potential. Biggio graciously has agreed to move to the outfield (most likely center) to make room for Kent at second base.

"To sign a player of Jeff's caliber is a huge addition,'' said Bagwell, who had his own six-year run of 100-RBI years ended when he finished at 98 last season. "With him in the lineup, you're back to the situation of 1998 and '99, when pitchers didn't have room to breathe against us.''

Astros catcher Brad Ausmus says St. Louis is still the team to beat in the NL Central. But he is merely being generous?

Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty moved aggressively to re-sign Woody Williams and trade for Brett Tomko, but are those moves enough? Barring any other additions, the Cardinals will go to spring training with a starting rotation (Matt Morris, Jason Simontacchi, Garrett Stephenson, Tomko and Williams) which worked only 706 innings last season.

Then there's the question of the bullpen. Closer Jason Isringhausen will have to be used carefully early in the season after offseason shoulder surgery and set-up men Dave Veres, Rick White and Luther Hackman are gone.

The anxiety around the Braves should be palpable in spring training. In a white-hot couple of days last week, Schuerholz imported Byrd and Ortiz and traded Millwood to Philadelphia. It followed an earlier trade for Mike Hampton, who becomes the No. 1 project for pitching coach Leo Mazzone.

Atlanta won 101 games because of its deep pitching staff last season. Yet, like the Cardinals, the Braves figure to suffer heavily from attrition.

Castoffs Millwood, Glavine, Damian Moss, Mike Remlinger, Chris Hammond and the non-tendered Kerry Ligtenberg were 65-34 with a 2.71 ERA last season. Hampton, Ortiz, Byrd and new lefty Ray King were 41-38 with a 4.32 ERA.

This is not progress. And it's taken us this long to get to the biggest potential difference-maker in the NL.

That would be Thome. In 2002, he had 35 more homers and 45 more RBI than Atlanta's four first basemen. He joins Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu to give Bowa a trio of hitters who combined for 109 homers and 303 RBI last season. Not to be forgotten, the Braves do have a pretty nice Big Three of their own in Gary Sheffield, Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones.

The Braves are hardly abdicating. But there are invaders in the castle walls.

Phil Rogers is the national baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune, which has a web site at www.chicagosports.com.