I always thought Wren's problem is that he didn't have an overall blueprint that dictated his moves. I'm not arguing that he didn't do well or that he didn't walk into a fairly high-pressure situation. Having Schuerholz (who really started screwing things up late in his tenure) looking over your shoulder and expecting you to be competitive with a tight payroll couldn't have been a walk in the park. But I always thought Wren was erratic in that he acted like a big-market club and a mid-market club at the same time.
I like Roy Clark, but he's not a demigod. But there's no question that the draft/international free agency approach went in a different direction under Wren. He graduated a lot of guys and some have been impressive (although Simmons was rushed and I think it shows in his approach at the plate) for the most part. But given a couple of bad signings, prospect-laden trades away from us, and some bad luck, the team came to a crossroads. I don't think we were contenders this year had we gone forward with the same team. The offense was inconsistent last year and likely would have been better, but I don't know how you replace 400+ innings (approximately 600 if Minor doesn't get healthy) and compete within the team's financial constraints. I agree that keep one of Heyward or J. Upton could have made sense and may have fit in the budget (I would have preferred Heyward), but there was going to have to be a rebuild at some level. Things came to a crossroads and we didn't have the budget to keep juggling things around.
The thing that frustrates me now is that there seems to be a lot of blaming and not a recognition of where the team was actually at as the 2014 season ended. I think we would have had to ride through 2015 and hope everything fell into place or taken dramatic steps. I think a plausible argument can be made that we have taken too many and too dramatic steps, but I don't think we could have simply tweaked the status quo. Can't prove the negative, so I could well be wrong, but everyone else is in the same boat.
As for Fredi, I thought he was a decent manager when he was in Florida, but given the composition of last year's team, he was pretty much stuck with what he had and had to hope everyone played well and consistently. It didn't add up for him and he made his share of blunders, but he had an 8-guy team and, like I said, all eight guys had to match what they did in 2013. Didn't happen. The front office team seems committed to Fredi and I frankly don't care one way or the other. He's going to "manage" this year and that's not always a good thing. It usually means you don't have that much talent so you're trying to make things happen. It's going to be an interesting season. I'm still sticking with a low-70-win season. I just don't think we're going to hit much.
