Bowman: Braves With Decisions To Make After Disappointing '14

If Fredi stays then you know Cox still has some pull. Wren seems to be taking a lot more blame than Fredi for some reason. I'm fully prepared for Fredi to stay and hopefully the talent can somehow overcome his complete and utter incompetence.
 
BremanFan88 said:
If Fredi stays then you know Cox still has some pull. Wren seems to be taking a lot more blame than Fredi for some reason. I'm fully prepared for Fredi to stay and hopefully the talent can somehow overcome his complete and utter incompetence.
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Kind of the same feeling I am getting. Looks like Wren is gone with Walker/Fletcher
 
Yeah, I'm willing to give Wren another year. We've been nothing but successful in his tenure and, while I don't agree with a few contracts he's handed out, it's not really his fault the roster he put together this year completely underperformed expectations.

As for Fredi, I don't think a new manager is going to magically make us a great team, but I just don't see how you can have two major collapses in 4 years and keep your job.
 
With Wren I don't know whether to praise him for some really great moves that allow us to compete as a 70 million payroll team or blame him for the 30 million we pay uggla/BJ that has in effect made the team a 70 million dollar team. We always seem to have at least one albatross of a contract. Before Uggla and BJ it was Kawakami and Lowe. The sad thing is that BJ and Uggla actually hurt us by being on the team, they are paying them nearly 30 million to decrease our chances of winning. That's on Wren.
 
The more and more I think about it, I'm willing to give Fredi a pass. This was Wren's Grand Experiment. It failed, he should bear the full brunt of responsibility for this nightmare.
 
cajunrevenge said:
With Wren I don't know whether to praise him for some really great moves that allow us to compete as a 70 million payroll team or blame him for the 30 million we pay uggla/BJ that has in effect made the team a 70 million dollar team. We always seem to have at least one albatross of a contract. Before Uggla and BJ it was Kawakami and Lowe. The sad thing is that BJ and Uggla actually hurt us by being on the team, they are paying them nearly 30 million to decrease our chances of winning. That's on Wren.
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To be fair the Braves had bad contracts before Wren. Remember Mike Hampton?
 
I'm so torn here. Wren has been both awesome and awful. The Michael Bourn and Justin Upton acquisitions weigh heavy as I think about keeping him, but the BJ extension alone makes me want to get rid of the guy. If we would of offered little to anything for Revere or Span, this whole conversation is probably completely different. But, hey, it is what it is.

Fredi... eh. I like him as a person, but he seems to manage by gut and not by numbers, which is pretty stupid. He has become better but he has room to improve to say the least.

Meh.
 
Ben Revere sucks.

And again it's seemingly always forgotten, no one knew that Span and Revere would be traded, there were 3 teams active in the CF market, Braves, Phillies, and Nationals, Braves for those who dont' remember wound up overpaying for Lowe because they lost out on every other starter on the market and we had to give him 1 more year to convince him to sign here instead of the Mets. And the Twinkies got pretty good return for Span and Revere, for Span they got Alex Meyer which would be close to us offering back then Sims or Wood, and Trevor May was also a very nice prospect, similar to Randall Delgado who we had to use to get Justin Upton.

The good of Wren outweighs the bad. The bad of Wren was signing both Lowe and Kawakami after trading for Vazquez, we only needed one of thme. And the Uggla extension and BJ signing. That's really it thogh. For the good you have the Bourn trade, the Harang and Santana signings, Hanson for Walden, both Vazquez trades, Justin trade, and more I could cite. Seemingly his issue has been with essentially long term FA signings.
 
BremanFan88 said:
So how many collapses are ok with you? To paraphrase Bobby Knight, "I've never seen a manager do so little with so much."
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Oh don't get me wrong. I wont shed a tear if Fredi is gone (No way in the world Bobby loses a 9 game wild card lead). I'm just saying that the organizational philosophy is set by the gm. If Fredi is gone, Wren need to ride off into the sunset with him.
 
zitothebrave said:
Ben Revere sucks.

And again it's seemingly always forgotten, no one knew that Span and Revere would be traded, there were 3 teams active in the CF market, Braves, Phillies, and Nationals, Braves for those who dont' remember wound up overpaying for Lowe because they lost out on every other starter on the market and we had to give him 1 more year to convince him to sign here instead of the Mets. And the Twinkies got pretty good return for Span and Revere, for Span they got Alex Meyer which would be close to us offering back then Sims or Wood, and Trevor May was also a very nice prospect, similar to Randall Delgado who we had to use to get Justin Upton.

The good of Wren outweighs the bad. The bad of Wren was signing both Lowe and Kawakami after trading for Vazquez, we only needed one of thme. And the Uggla extension and BJ signing. That's really it thogh. For the good you have the Bourn trade, the Harang and Santana signings, Hanson for Walden, both Vazquez trades, Justin trade, and more I could cite. Seemingly his issue has been with essentially long term FA signings.
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Yes he does, but the Phils have paid him approximately $2.5 million over the past two years while we're just short of paying M. Upton $30 million.

Going into the 2012 off-season, it was pretty much the standard impression that the Twins were going to trade Span or Revere. The surprise is that they traded them both. We could have probably had Span for J.R. Graham and another lesser prospect. We could have probably gotten Revere for the same price.

Wren's problem is that he appears to bid against himself, especially on length of contract. This is particularly damning given the environment when M. Upton was signed and the budget was supposedly tight. I don't worship Billy Beane, but Wren needs to go to his workshop on juggling contracts.
 
The thing is you said it, no one knew SPan and Revere would both be sold. Most considered Revere would have been the keeper. Don't know why they traded him except that they realized he isn't that good. Doesn't hit, doesn't field, just fast.

Wren was effectively bidding against himself, but he didn't want another Lowe contract. Damned if you do damned if you don't. Most figured Upton would get at least 5/60 so it's not like he was gigantically overpaid. IIRC the numbers were basically a 5 year lock with money ranging from 60-80 so we were likely on the upper, but not out fo the realm. It wasn't like with Lowe where we had to pay him another year to get him to play here.
 
Some comments in this article support some of the things I've read. Talking about the possible discourse between the front office and the player development folks reminds me of all the stuff I have read about Frank Wren and Bruce Manno not really getting along with people within the organization very well.

It will be interesting to see what decisions Terry McGuirk and John Schuerholz make this off-season. I've already read some speculation that John Hart may be asked to oversee the baseball operations, perhaps with John Coppolella as a young GM.
 
So can we assume that John Coppolella is going to get a GM job sooner than later and maybe the Braves don't want to lose him?
 
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