"The implausibility of the Braves making it back to the postseason despite a cartoon-like series of medical pitfalls and a lineup seemingly written in wet sand - Look out! Wave! - is dwarfed by only this development: Derek Lowe has gone from a $60 million mistake to this team's possible key.

Mistake might be a slight overstatement. Lowe hasn't been awful. But when a pitcher is given free-agent dollars that scream, "Ace," and then goes 15-10 with a 4.67 ERA, there's going to be criticism.

There also are going to be trade talks. Or as general manager Frank Wren said of this past winter in his best non-denial denial: "We were in the mode that we wanted to explore every possibility."

The best trade the Braves never made? It sounds strange, but consider this: The Braves are not playing their first playoff game since 2005 Thursday night against San Francisco without Lowe. They don't fall over the finish line and land in a wild-card nirvana if he is not going 5-0 in September with a ridiculous series of starts - totals: 29 strikeouts, three balls, 1.17 ERA in 30 1/3 innings - that didn't remotely resemble any previous portion of his Atlanta employment.

In July and August, Lowe was 2-6 with a 4.52 ERA in 11 starts.

In September, he was sprinkled with pixie dust and morphed into Whitey Ford.

"The way September went was the way you kind of hoped and envisioned you'd be pitching every month," Lowe said Wednesday.

Some of Lowe's problems were physical. He has a bone chip in his right elbow that had been bothering him for six weeks. Finally, after a start against Florida on Aug. 29, during which it took Lowe 23 pitches to record an out and he allowed five runs in three innings, he knew he couldn't continue. So he got a pain-killing injection in his elbow and missed a start.

But some of the issues clearly were mental.

Wren, when asked if he believed Lowe struggled trying to live up to the four-year, $60 million contract, said: "I don't think so. He has signed big contracts before. But it's like anything else. You come into a new situation, and sometimes it can snowball on you. I just think when he came back, he kind of got a fresh start."

None of Lowe's wins down the stretch came against premium competition. The opponents: Pittsburgh, Washington, New York, Washington, Florida. But the 5-1 win over the Marlins, during which he allowed one run and struck out nine in 5 2/3 innings Sept. 29, was particularly impressive because he was coming off three days' rest."