The Atlanta Braves will be replacing more than just their Assistant GM in the coming weeks.
It’s hardly an unprecedented situation, but the Atlanta Braves may be listing some job openings on Indeed or Zip Recruiter soon as new Angels GM Perry Minasian is trying to get the ‘group rate’ for moving households to Southern California:
New Angels GM Perry Minasian is hiring three former colleagues from the Braves, sources tell The Athletic. Alex Tamin will be assistant GM, Dominic Chiti special assistant and Rick Williams a scout.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 22, 2020
When we posted the news that Minasian was heading to Anaheim, Tamin was one of the names we postulated as a replacement for the position of right-hand-man to Alex Anthopoulos.
There’s a couple of things noteworthy in that announcement above, though: (1) Anthopoulos was willing to allow Minasian to hire Tamin and the others away from the Braves, and (2) Anthopoulos wasn’t willing to promote Tamin to keep him in Atlanta.
Of course while that sounds a bit harsh, there may very well have been a strong element of professional courtesy exercised here:
Tamin was an assistant GM with the Braves, but his move to the Angels qualifies as a promotion; Minasian had a similar title with Atlanta, but ranked above him. Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos, in allowing Tamin to depart, also took into account that he lives in California. https://t.co/r5KmHcyrnl
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 22, 2020
Dodgers’ beat writer Bill Plunkett tells us that Tamin was part of the group that Anthopoulos poached from the Dodgers when he left LA to head for Atlanta, so this move does permit him to “go home” as he opted not to completely uproot himself from California for the last three years.
This is, of course, the season for change around baseball, and due to the slim number of jobs involved, front office management has a system of etiquette for making changes.
Generally speaking, the senior-level personnel must be allowed to interview outside of their own organization, though the permission is most often granted whenever a promotion would be involved.
As noted here, Tamin’s title was Assistant General Manager, and that’s still going to be his title in Anaheim. However, it’s still a promotion as he becomes a “higher level” AGM. With the Atlanta Braves, he ranked below Minasian in the pecking order. Thus, because it was not a lateral move — and for the other reasons noted above — Anthopoulos chose to permit Minasian to poach Tamin from the Braves.
All this simply underscores the “buddy” system that baseball has: if you have experience and friends in the game… you can get employed by sticking together. We’ve seen this a lot with pairings such as Frank Wren and Dave Dombrowski and with Kim Ng getting her shot in Miami with acquaintences Derek Jeter and Don Mattingly.
That said, it’s going to be time for Alex Anthopoulos to punch up a few old numbers from his own friends’ list: the Braves have a lot to do this off-season and he’s going to be awfully busy this Winter if he doesn’t have a couple of trusted allies down the hall to help with the workload.