Re: Catholicism
No one has said you NEED the sacraments to be saved. You may be saved without baptism, but baptism (assuming you don't reject it later) guarantees salvation. A being true does not imply B is false.
Protestantism is a very wide range of beliefs. If you were to look at some of the first protestant churchs, the Anglicans, Lutherans, Episcipalians(sp?) and their direct descendants (Wesleyans, etc.) the changes are minimal. They still have a council of bishops, but no pope. They don't believe the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ, they allow divorce. Aside from that, you could walk into a Lutheran service and never know it's not Catholic.
As you get farther away from that, say into Universalist Unitarianism, things start to get a little weird.
I'm assuming you know the history, so this should probably make sense. The most critical difference is the original protestant churchs rejected the Catholic church's heirarchy, and many traditions. Usually, each church has its own reason for being separate from its parent which may make it more or less of a jump from Catholicism (Calvinists believe in predestination, whereas Wesleyans just believed Wesley was a really super guy). However, without a unified governing body there's no 'change control', so you also end up with some pretty fringe groups.