50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
I don't know if many thought Heyward would be the mid 800 OPS guy he was as a rookie going forward. But from 2012-2015 he posted a 781 OPS with a range of 109 OPS+ to 117. I think most people expected something in that area and not the 68 and 85 OPS+ he's had in the past two years.
Yes sometimes teams simply have bad luck. Like the run of quality starting pitches getting injury after injury for the Braves during the Wren era. I still believe that overall if you have the right process you will see success.
I think the latest process has been fraught with miscues and the thought behind the overall framework is faulty, but I don't think the problem with the Wren era was simply bad luck. Wren (and by extension those above him) ran the team as if it still had Turner's pocketbook. We had graduated a bunch of very good players from the minor league system, but we had no ready replacements for the departure of impending free agents and no money to hit the top drawer free agent market.
I don't want to make this about Wren v. Coppolella, but I hope as we move to the next phase, we find someone who will concentrate on constructing a long-term sustainable strategy that recognizes both the strengths and constraints under which the team operates. I don't think we've had that since the early 2000s. Even the latter years of the Schuerholz era were characterized by reflexive hiccups that refused to deal with the realities of the Braves' situation.