Welcome back, John Schuerholz.

For a couple years there, when the Braves were fanning on chances to land the likes of Alex Rodriguez and all first basemen under age 40, you wondered if Time Warner accountants had locked the real Schuerholz into a janitor's closet beneath Turner Field.

Or perhaps aliens, acting in concert with evil genius Bobby Valentine, had secretly abducted the real Schuerholz, taking him to planet Metron while a suspenders-wearing clone made just enough moves to keep Atlanta's Missing Persons bureau from launching a citywide search.

	Gary Sheffield brings a potent bat to the Braves lineup.

In any case, here's the bad news for the Mets and Phillies, as well as the walking-on-water Diamondbacks and other teams hoping to win a National League pennant: Atlanta is officially back in business.

By adding Gary Sheffield and the boulder he carries on his shoulder, Schuerholz not only made Stone Mountain feel overwhelmed but also extended the shelf life of the longest running Southern dynasty since Tyson chicken. The Sheffield trade was the kind of masterstroke that Schuerholz built his reputation on, first in Kansas City and then the early days in Atlanta's run of 10 consecutive division titles, excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season.

"Very infrequently in my career as a general manager -- 21 years -- have I found a unanimity in a (trade) recommendation," Schuerholz said.

He did with Sheffield. That's because, according to Schuerholz, "many people in baseball think (Gary's) the most productive right-handed hitter in the National League and maybe in all of baseball."

With Sheffield and 1999 MVP Chipper Jones hitting back to back, the Braves will remember what is it is like to strut. While they kept finding ways to hold off the Mets in the NL East, they had lost their arrogance in recent years.

The nadir came last season, when they had their lowest winning percentage since 1990 and were outscored by 12 of the other 15 teams in the NL, with even non-factors like Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Florida producing more runs.

When the Braves won only one game against Arizona in the NLCS, it marked their third losing playoff series in their last four. The slide started when the Yankees swept the 1999 World Series, and many people wondered if the Braves would ever get back to the Series behind Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.

Maybe they won't. Maybe the legacy of these great Atlanta teams will remain as much that they won only once in five trips to the Series as their regular-season dominance. But with Sheffield and free agent third baseman Vinny Castilla in a lineup that also includes Andruw Jones and supposedly healthy versions of Rafael Furcal and Javy Lopez, the Braves aren't too far behind St. Louis on the short list of NL teams likely to play for a championship in 2002.

Yes, Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz are in their mid-30s now. Logic says almost 9,200 combined innings will have to catch up to them sooner or later. But it's unlikely any of the three will lose it overnight. Maddux and Glavine have been so great for so long that they can slip and still be very good.

Just how good has the Braves' pitching been? The best measure isn't the eight times in the last 10 years that Atlanta has led the NL in staff ERA. It is that the Braves have allowed the fewest runs in the NL for 10 consecutive years.

Think about that. For 10 years in a row, playing on two home fields that are considered good places to hit, the Braves have been the NL's stingiest team. Seven different AL teams have shared that distinction over the last decade, with only Boston (1999-2000) and Cleveland (1995-96) repeating.

	Sheff is Cookin'
	Gary Sheffield's stats over the last three seasons while playing for the Dodgers:
	Year	G	HR	RBI	OPS	Avg.
	'99	152	34	101	.930	.301
	'00	141	43	109	1.081	.325
	'01	143	36	100	1.000	.311

The unwillingness to surrender runs is the reason the Braves have outscored the opposition by an average of 143 runs during the run that began back in 1991. There's every reason to believe that the upcoming season will feature a vintage performance by Leo Mazzone's staff.

For starters, this will be the first year in the last three that manager Bobby Cox won't start the season counting on the master of bad body language, John Rocker. Don't underestimate the therapeutic value of removing Rocker's peevish personality from an otherwise ultra-professional clubhouse. It's the ultimate addition by subtraction.

Jason Marquis, who joins the rotation, brings the same kind of upside that Kevin Millwood showed in 1998 and '99, when he won 35 games. While Millwood has slipped over the last two seasons (he has compiled a 17-20 record), there's not a team in the majors -- the Yankees included -- which wouldn't take him as its No. 4 starter.

Millwood, bothered by a variety of ailments in 2001, was throwing like his old self at a pitching mini-camp in early February. "He's going to be a key, key part of the level of success we have this season," Glavine said. "If he picks up where he was a couple years ago, we're right back with a deep, strong rotation."

The 23-year-old Marquis is one of the NL's best young pitchers and should be ready to prove it now that he has 150 career innings under his belt. The Braves also might get a major lift in the bullpen from 22-year-old right-hander Tim Spooneybarger, who compiled an 0.71 ERA in 42 appearances out of the bullpen for Triple-A Richmond last year.

The annual dominance of Atlanta's pitching staff has muted an annual roller coaster ride by its lineup. The Braves have never had the best offense in the NL during their 11-year run and haven't even finished among the top five in the league in runs scored since 1998, when they won 106 games.

The Braves ranked 11th, sixth and seventh with averages of 4.5, 5.0 and 5.2 runs per game the last three years. In the postseason, those averages shrank to 3.6, 3.3 and 3.6.

Pitching is supposed to win championships, right? Well, in 1995, the one time Atlanta has won the World Series, the Braves produced an average of 4.9 runs in their 14-game playoff run.

Schuerholz knows these trends as well as anyone. That's why he happily sent Brian Jordan and Odalis Perez to the Dodgers for Sheffield, who long had envied the hitters who got to work in the stable Atlanta environment.

As consistent of a run-producer as Chipper Jones has been -- hitting .309 or better in five of the last six seasons and driving in at least 102 runs in all six -- Sheffield has had a higher OPS in five of Jones' seven full big-league seasons.

They will give Cox the best 1-2 combination he has ever had -- better than Jordan and Jones, better than Andres Galarraga and Jones, better than Fred McGriff and Jones, better than David Justice and Ron Gant.

So much for all that holiday good cheer over Valentine's Mets, who added Roberto Alomar and Mo Vaughn, among others, to a lineup built around Mike Piazza.

With Jeromy Burnitz and Roger Cedeno also migrating to Shea Stadium, New York should outscore Atlanta. But Al Leiter is the only member of the Mets' starting rotation who isn't a gamble -- and gone are the years when the Mets had the NL's deepest bullpen.

The Phillies? They are scaring no one, except possibly their own season-ticket holders. Philadelphia will have a tough time duplicating last year's 86-win season after an offseason when GM Ed Wade did little more than import Terry Adams, who is largely untested as a starter.

That's a move like the Atlanta GM masquerading as Schuerholz might have made a year ago. The real Schuerholz, on the other hand, knows how to make a difference.

He did it with Jim Sundberg in 1985, with Terry Pendleton and Sid Bream in '91 and Galarraga in '98. He's really done it this time with Sheffield.

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