Atlanta Braves hire GM Alex Anthopoulos
By Fred Owens
Alex Anthopoulus bring a fresh face and a new look to Atlanta #Braves front office pic.twitter.com/pvyDnDNcpx
— Chief_Fred (@FredEOwens) November 13, 2017
A quick history of Alex Anthopoulos
Anthopoulos (henceforth known as AA) began as intern for the Expos and worked his way up the scouting coordinator. In 2003 he moved to the same position for the Blue Jays and in 2005 became AGM under J.P. Ricciardi.
In spite of having teams finish towards the bottom of the league most years while AA was AGM and GM, their drafts were less than stellar successes. Highlights include:
- Rickey Romero in 2005
- J.P. Arencibia and Brett Cecil in 2007
- Yan Gomes in tenth round of 2009
- Aaron Sanchez and (1st round 34th) and Noah Syndergaard (1st round 38th pick) 2010 – Their first pick was Deck McGuire 1st round #11. (If you said ‘who?’… yeah me too.)
- Joe Musgrove (1st round 46th pick), Daniel Norris 2nd round and Anthony DeSclafani 6th round 2011
- Marcus Stroman (1st round 22nd) in 2012
- Jeff Hoffman (1st round 9th)
You’ll should notice two things about this list. First there weren’t many first round picks. This came largely as a result of signing free agents with draft compensation attached.
The second item is less obvious. Of the good picks made only Sanchez and Stroman made an impact while with the Blue Jays. The rest were traded away. Today we hear that Jerry Dipoto makes a lot of trades. Frankly, AA makes Dipoto look like an amateur.