Mark Bradley: Is all this Braves' rebuilding really necessary?
It has been clear from the day of Frank Wren’s “termination” that two of the three Johns — team presidents Hart and Schuerholz — hate every single thing the former general manager ever did. (It’s less clear whether assistant GM John Coppollela does. He did, after all, work for Wren.) But were the Braves as an organization really as wretched as the new/old guys would have us believe? Is a total tear-down of a team that won 94 games in 2012 and 96 in 2013 necessary?
It was only 11 months ago that Wren was being lauded, in this space but not only in this space, for locking up Freddie Freeman, Julio Teheran, Andrelton Simmons and Craig Kimbrel. Now each of the above — except for Teheran; as a young pitcher, he’s exempt — has to wonder if he’ll be next out the door and, beyond that, if he really wants to stay and play for a team that’s guaranteed to lose big.
Forget challenging Washington for first in the National League East. The challenge for the 2015 Braves will be to fight off Philadelphia for fourth place in a five-team division. The Phillies stand as a case study as to what will happen if a team waits too long to rebuild: Their players got so old and so pricey that nobody wants any of them except for Cole Hamels. Philly became that worst possible entity — a bad old team.
The Braves, however, weren’t old. Their 2014 roster was the second-youngest in the majors, trailing only Houston’s. Those Braves fell apart at the end, but they were tied for first place at the All-Star break. Even if you believe Wren was the dunce of dunces, was it reasonable to assume that his first losing season since 2008 — the year after he’d inherited the team from Schuerholz — was evidence the Braves were doomed to more losing?
I have no issue with wholesale rebuilding when it’s warranted. I’m not sure this was. But I’m reasonably sure the new regime has doomed the Braves, at least in the short term, to loads of losing.
It has been clear from the day of Frank Wren’s “termination” that two of the three Johns — team presidents Hart and Schuerholz — hate every single thing the former general manager ever did. (It’s less clear whether assistant GM John Coppollela does. He did, after all, work for Wren.) But were the Braves as an organization really as wretched as the new/old guys would have us believe? Is a total tear-down of a team that won 94 games in 2012 and 96 in 2013 necessary?
It was only 11 months ago that Wren was being lauded, in this space but not only in this space, for locking up Freddie Freeman, Julio Teheran, Andrelton Simmons and Craig Kimbrel. Now each of the above — except for Teheran; as a young pitcher, he’s exempt — has to wonder if he’ll be next out the door and, beyond that, if he really wants to stay and play for a team that’s guaranteed to lose big.
Forget challenging Washington for first in the National League East. The challenge for the 2015 Braves will be to fight off Philadelphia for fourth place in a five-team division. The Phillies stand as a case study as to what will happen if a team waits too long to rebuild: Their players got so old and so pricey that nobody wants any of them except for Cole Hamels. Philly became that worst possible entity — a bad old team.
The Braves, however, weren’t old. Their 2014 roster was the second-youngest in the majors, trailing only Houston’s. Those Braves fell apart at the end, but they were tied for first place at the All-Star break. Even if you believe Wren was the dunce of dunces, was it reasonable to assume that his first losing season since 2008 — the year after he’d inherited the team from Schuerholz — was evidence the Braves were doomed to more losing?
I have no issue with wholesale rebuilding when it’s warranted. I’m not sure this was. But I’m reasonably sure the new regime has doomed the Braves, at least in the short term, to loads of losing.