McGuirk: Coppella Exit Like Cutting ‘Cancer’ To Move Ahead

DirkPiggler said:
This always seemed to be the crux of Jeff Wren's complaints about the Braves after his brother got the axe and was scapegoated. Frank was never allowed to tear everything down and start over. All he was allowed to do was to try to keep winning on a shoestring budget.

I'm not at all saying that I think Wren was a great GM. The Upton and Lowe contracts (mainly the 4th year on Lowe) and the Johnson and Uggla extensions make a solid case that Wren did a poor job managing available resources. But it's not really fair to judge the farm system he left given that he was under a mandate from above to win division titles with a less-than-competitive payroll. He pretty much had to use high draft picks on guys that appeared close to ML ready, rather than going after high upside guys who would require significant development.

The Braves would've been much better off had Schuerholz retired gracefully when his GM days were over.
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Bobby had power too. The biggest complaint during that time will always be demanding a MLB 1B when trading Tex. Such a dumb move.
 
Didn't Wren draft or sign the likes of Gattis, Kimbrel, Simmons and Wood? And of course Albies and Acuna.

And didn't he also make the great trade for JUpton?

Aren't those the assets that Coppy used to acquire the ****ty pitching prospects?
 
Super said:
imagine where the rebuild would be if we only had just albies and acuna.
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Actually imagine a rebuild where everything is different. According to Jeff Wren (probably not the most reliable I know) Frank tried to rebuild multiple times and wasn't allowed to. I'm guessing the FW rebuild probably doesn't involve either Upton. Probably involved trading McCann rather than letting him walk in FA. Maybe trading off Heyward sooner for even more return.

Reality is we don't really know what the Braves would look like in another rebuild because most of the people in charge are still in Charge. McGuirk and JS are still there. Sure they got rid of Coppy and Hart, and before that Wren. But the 2 at the very top are still there.
 
sturg33 said:
Didn't Wren draft or sign the likes of Gattis, Kimbrel, Simmons and Wood? And of course Albies and Acuna.

And didn't he also make the great trade for JUpton?

Aren't those the assets that Coppy used to acquire the ****ty pitching prospects?
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Clark drafted Kimbrel. Albies/Acuna had no impact on the team. Th assets used to acquire Upton were brought into the organization by Clark and international.
 
Evad said:
I am not going to use the word cancer like others have. Don't like that and should never be used to describe a person. I've done so in the past, and won't ever again.

With that said, although Coppy crippled our signing ability in the International Pool, and left a stain on the franchise, I still don't like Wren, as a GM, more.

The signing of Melvin Upton left a bad taste in my mouth. Didn't like it at the time. I couldn't believe fans wanted him here in the first place. He wasn't a good ball player before he signed with us and sure wasn't while he was here. The fact that we could've got a whole lot more in a trade for Kimbrel if we didn't need to get rid of Melvin's remaining contract. Ohh..Don't let me forget the Nate McLouth trade fiasco. And then there is the fact that our farm system was a wasteland during his time. But, don't get me wrong. He made some good trades as well though.

Also, Coppy had his fair share of bad trades/signings. His biggest bad trade was Alex Wood, Jose Peraza and others for Olivera and others, which included Wentz. The rules violations that he committed will be the thing that he will be remembered for though.
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Such refreshing insights. None of that has ever been mentioned here before.
 
sturg33 said:
Yeah, the bad farm was Wrens fault except for the studs he drafted that Wren had nothing to do with
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Wren forced Clark out and put his own guys in. That's why the farm sucked under him. Now Clark is back and miraculously we are good at drafting again.
 
thewupk said:
You have to understand that Wren wasn't responsible for anything but signing bad contracts and making poor extensions.
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He deserves credit for gattis/wood/simmons. Those were hi guys running the drafts at that point.
 
thewupk said:
Bobby had power too. The biggest complaint during that time will always be demanding a MLB 1B when trading Tex. Such a dumb move.
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Really what would have been ideal for the Braves as far as wins would have been for Bobby and JS to both retire after 06 or 07. The Tex trade was truly miserable on both of their behalves. JS for making the trade and Cox for demanding a MLB 1st baseman on the flip side.

Didn't we have a really good offer from Tampa for Tex?

Anyway if we just didn't make the trade we'd have all those pieces. Going into 2007 Salty was 36 Andrus 66 Harrison 90. Going into 2008 Andrus 19, Feliz 93. 2009 Feliz 10 Andrus 37. 2010 Feliz 9.

So basically we moved 3 top 40 prospects. In return we got a former top prospect with some mild intrigue in Kotchman and a nobody prospect in Marek who's a reliever prospect.

We know what we got back at this point of the trade.

We got
Tex (6.1 rWAR)
Mahay (0.8 rWAR)
Kotchman (0.7rWAR)

We gave up (career stats)
Salty (6.0 rWAR)
Harrison (9.2 rWAR)
Andrus (28.2 rWAR)
Feliz (7.6 rWAR)

Now of course that's not the real value we gave up because all of them were in the majors long enough to leave rookie contract. But you can truly see how bad we were fleeced. And that's not factoring in the value Feliz brought as a prospect which was much higher than what he did in the majors, probably due to injury.
 
CyYoung31 said:
Exactly. Wren was successful at what he was tasked to do (field winning teams), Cop underperformed with what he was tasked to do (maximize value on existing assets and oversee a reasonably quick rebuild). Add him crippling our international prospects now and for years to come, and there’s no way anyone can say they were “equally bad” with a straight face.
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wren inherited a lot of good players. he did a poor job of adding to those good players. he did a poor job of building a farm system to supplement those players. those are things he was tasked with doing, and he failed at it.

trading guys with 1 year left before huge FA deals isn't often going to lead to huge returns. there were some bad and good trades, along with solid-to-great drafts.

this idea that wren was a good GM is kind of a joke to me.
 
Evad said:
Good point here. However, as I stated earlier, the main "stain" for me is when he signed Melvin Upton to that contract. He should have never offered that to him. Which in turn hurt our return on the Kimbrel trade.
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What “hurt our return on the Kimbrel trade” was the inane decision to bundle Upton and Kimbrel; that didn’t have to happen, and it diluted Kimbrel’s value—another error of the Hart regime.
 
I never accused him of being a good gm. He had good moments and I really believe he had pressures from JS and Cox to win now. I think hart and coppy had same pressure to win sooner than needed. I think both were bad gms. Hart coppy nut kicked us and that makes them infinitely worse.
 
Knucksie said:
Such refreshing insights. None of that has ever been mentioned here before.
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Guess you were being sarcastic here.. But, seeing how I just joined this site last month, and I didn't read every single post when I did I join... and didn't read every single post in this thread...ohh well. Let it be sarcasm.
 
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