Reflections on the Promotion of Atlanta Braves’ GM John Coppolella
Mar 1, 2014; Port St. Lucie, FL, USA; A scout in the stands behind home plate uses a radar gun to clock the speed of the pitch at 88 mph in the spring training game between the Miami Marlins and the New York Mets at Tradition Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports
People Problems
When John Schuerholz or John Hart spoke a year ago about getting back to the ‘Braves way’, I was puzzled about this at first. But then word leaked out about just how many long-time personnel had been transitioning to other organizations. Carroll Rogers wrote about this last year. A key quote from his piece is this one:
"[Clark and Scouting Director Brian Bridges] laud their communication skills [John Hart’s and Coppy’s] and their willingness to delegate, something that was a source of frustration under the previous regime."
Scout extraordinaire Roy Clark was gone for the last five years of Wren’s tenure – he is now back. Tom Battista and Dan Cox are as well. While they couldn’t get everyone to return, the Braves did take the opportunity to steal key people from other teams – Gordon Blakeley from the Yankees for international scouting is probably the star on this list. Clark, in turn, recommended Reed Dunn from the Nationals… and his own son Justin, who was working for the Dodgers.
In Clark, it’s evident that he understands the math of baseball, telling Rogers that the Braves need to have their best scouts in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and the Southeast since “80% of big leaguers” come from there. Of all things, that’s probably the most reassuring part of this transition… ignoring the fact that the 2nd pick Atlanta made back in June was a kid from Calgary, Alberta named Mike Soroka.
Options: Few
As Gandy pointed out, Frank Wren was left with a short deck of choices. He couldn’t do a full rebuild. That wasn’t allowed. He had poorer draft-choice options (having good teams meant that his picks were naturally going to be deeper into the draft).
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When multiple top picks failed to pan out, Wren was forced to go to the free agent markets or to the trade market to fill holes. But the better free agent signings required the sacrifice of future draft picks. This had a cascading effect thanks to injuries (such as the Tommy John epidemic that has hit the Braves dis-proportionately hard) and simple lack of performance from multiple high-profile players. Better prospects then had to be traded away. Rinse and repeat those trends and the farm system ultimately became depleted.
How did this play into personnel matters? It’s complicated.
Wren may have been trying to “circle the wagons” to some extent by getting his own people installed at key positions: his own brother Jeff (who is a respected scout in his own right), Assistant GM Bruce Manno – just to name two. Meanwhile, long-time staff members departed.
Even if that wasn’t Wren’s motivation, this is akin to a manager being allowed to hire his own staff: it’s important to have people you trust in your organization. Unfortunately for Wren, his scouts didn’t have the kind of results that the Braves has enjoyed with Schuerholz in the GM chair… or at least the results that Schuerholz expected.
But all these things – personnel, draft, money – may have conspired together to give Wren a hand of cards that he simply couldn’t win with.
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