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Doc,
I HAVE looked for externally imported legitimizers that turned a franchise and have found ZERO.
Vlad did NOT raise the Angels. LAA won a WS without him - and after a bad season, Vlad took them back to the level they were at without him - (except, of course, they never got back to the WS with him).
I have stated on numerous occasions that I believe pitchers work differently and there are in fact dozens of cases where pitching imports elevate franchises. (Though this would NOT apply to Atlanta, who became good BEFORE they went and added Maddux).
My honest expectation was to find SOME teams that turned things around by bringing in a big bat. I would figure that with the number of FAs moving all the time, this would have happened by random chance somewhere along the way. This is, in fact, one of the major reasons I have moved further away from the big-bat mentality to thinking not that they are not in fact "saviors", but more often than not, they are, in fact, detrimental to the development of the internal talent, rather than aids.
I think part of the difference between savior bats and savior arms is math. SPs are unique in how much they control each outing. A batter, no matter how good, will only be a little over 1/9 of the offensive inputs each game. But, I think there is also a psychological aspect in play where the aggregate impact tends to be more negative than positive,
Obviously, Pendleton was a major boost to Atlanta in their turn-around season. But there is no doubt also that he was not "expected" to be anything remotely close to the offensive producer that he turned out to be. (Part of the reason they went for Pendleton was because they were more concerned with shoring up the defense than the offense where Justice and Gant were already established "legitimizers" before Pendleton arrived.
Mind you, I'm not saying that imports cannot improve offenses. They can. But the historic results simply do not support the notion that "big name bats" produce the "franshice-altering" effects that are the foundation belief that accompanies the pleas by the fans to go out and get help.
It's not just the negative examples like AROD or Juan Gone, but the utter lack of actual titles won after import stars arrived.
One could argue Bonds turned the Giants around, since they went from 72 to 102 wins the year he arrived, (though Will Clark was already an establsiehd star). But, the fact is, San Fran didn't make the playoffs until Bonds' 5th season - and they never won a title with him, (but they've won two with Buster Posey).
IMO, people see "winning" teams bringing in FAs (after they are alread good), and are conflating the addition of talent to already winning franchises with the impression that the FAs were the key to "getting" good.