Braves Fire GM Frank Wren
The Braves have had a pretty lousy season, and General Manager Frank Wren has lost his job because of it. The team announced today that John Hart will take over as interim GM.
The Braves have dismissed general manager Frank Wren. John Hart has been named as the interim GM.
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) September 22, 2014
Speculation to date has focused on Hart or former GM John Schuerholtz taking more active roles in the baseball operations department, and the placement of Hart as interim GM, leading a formal GM search that includes Schuerholtz and Bobby Cox, seems to confirm those reports. Previous rumors have suggested that the most likely outcome is that either Hart or Schuerholtz will directly oversee baseball operations, with assistant GM John Coppolella getting promoted to the GM role.
Eno did an interview with Coppolella back at the 2010 winter meetings, which you can read at that link.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Will Fredi and Walker survive? Wren made some free agent mistakes, but have mixed feelings about this…
It’s hard to fault Wren for the free agent signings. He signed guys other people liked too for fair contracts. It’s not his fault they fell off the cliff. The Escobar and Harang deals were nice this year. He lost a large chunk of his starting rotation before the first pitch was thrown and his team will still finish near .500. Wren’s made mistakes, but there are far worse GMs and I don’t think this season should have led to his removal. If Philly sacked Amaro today and hired Wren, I wouldn’t be too unhappy.
Hate to see anyone get sacked, but the FA contracts seemed like bad ideas on the day they were signed, and they definitely didn’t turn out well. The farm system has also become much weaker on his watch.
The Upton contract looked fine when it was signed. Absolutely no one in baseball predicted what happened to B.J. Upton. No one can even explain it even now that it’s happened. The criticism of Wren over that contract is sheer hindsight bias.
Anon21, a lot of people worried about the Upton contract the day it was signed. I would have rather the Braves offered Bourn the exact contract Cleveland gave him. He fit the need a lot more and was a good Braves the year and a half he was here.
Wren had more knowledge of Bourn than any other GM, and chose to let him walk. That decision looks like a good one now, even if the decision on who to replace him blew up in Wren’s face. The only NL East team that came out of the 2012 CF Sweepstakes smiling is the Nationals, and I think it’s fair to say that very few people thought Denard Span was going to outplay B.J. Upton in 2013 and 2014.
And again, no one thought B.J. Upton would crater the way he has. “Worrying” about the contract is one thing, but saying that Wren should have seen this inexplicable collapse coming is stupid.
Few people thought Span would outplay Upton? What?! I think most Fangraphs readers would’ve have picked Span over Upton the day that contract was signed! The Upton deal was bad the day it was signed and anyone who knew about BJ Upton and his past KNEW it was a bad signing.
Agreed, I believe 80% of us would have chosen Span over B.J. Upton. Dave Cameron called the Span trade the heist of the offseason and commented that the Nationals got a better player than the Braves did, for far less.
The mets did well in 2012. They added Byrd who became Herrera and gave the cf job to the best cf in the nl east atm
Okay, regardless of retrospective comparisons between Denard Span and B.J. Upton, the larger point is that the Upton signing looked like an unspectacular but reasonable deal when it occurred. No one foresaw Upton’s complete loss of hitting ability. To use Upton as Exhibit A in the case against Wren is pure hindsight bias.
It did not look like a reasonable deal to anyone on this website. Not even my friend who is OBSESSED with ATL was happy about it, he created a twitter handle called “Did BJ Strike Out Today.” It was a terrible, terrible signing. Everyone foresaw regression coming from BJ. Everyone. I don’t think Wren should’ve gotten fired because of it, alone, but it was terrible and it should not have been done.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/b-j-upton-braves-reach-hefty-predictable-agreement/ :
Why, look at that, it’s from this very website! By a dude who maybe knows a bit more about player valuation and projection than “Steve”!
Glancing at the FG article analyzing B.J.’s signing back in the winter of 2012, it looks fairly balanced between positive & negative responses. (“Dick Whitman” got it more right than anyone. Deal indeed turned out to be a “monstrosity.”)
That author was wrong about “potential albatross,” but saying that Upton was a better deal than the Ethier extension is like saying going to Vegas is slightly smarter than setting your money on fire.
Okay, further down in the same article:
Hind. Sight. Bias.
Anon, look at his metrics. In 2012 he was making less contact and his K rate was unsustainable… it was going to go up. His power numbers were unsustainable for other reasons. His offense that year was an anomaly and it wasn’t going to happen again in 2013. Everyone who studies offensive metrics knew it. They knew the Braves would not be getting 2012 Rays B.J Upton. The pace he was putting up was not sustainable. And now you have 2013 and 2014 B.J.
Yeah, I’m sorry, I have to throw my hat into the ring on behalf of the “I never liked that deal crowd.” No hindsight involved. I didn’t predict Upton would be THIS awful, but I thought it was a bad contract. I’ve never really been a fan of toolsy players like Upton (Rasmus being another example) who have high K rates and are wildly inconsistent. I find they can permanently turn into nothing very quickly.
That said, I didn’t think this was enough to fire Wren. Also, what about his deal for the OTHER Upton? Even if he’s more patience-and-power slugger than 5 tool outfielder now, he’s still very good.
Anytime you look at the comments for any deal, you’re going to find a range from “OMG this is the greatest deal ever” to “OMG this will destroy the franchise” — more or less. (Aside from the odd exception, like the Veron Wells trade). In retrospect, some of those people will always be exactly right… but they’re almost never consistently the same people. The guy smugly slapping himself on the back for his perfect “analysis” of one deal will be the one quietly hoping nobody remembers his comments on another.
Not that this is anything anybody here shouldn’t already know.
Wow, so many GMs have been fired this year. Even Frank Wren has lost his job.
(looks at Phillies’ GM office)
(Ruben sees me, smiles, waves)
Sigh……..
Wren consistently complied rosters that everyone knew had a chace to potentially win division titles but didn’t have the consistent hitting or “power pitching” to compete into the playoffs. The offense was also prone to severe slumping, as we saw this year and in 2012. Time for a change to the origanizational philosophy when it cmes to roster construction. Fredi is likely gone too, but to be honest I don’t know how much replacing him would do. He makes boneheaded decisions, but as we have seen before, replacing a manager that makes boneheaded decisions with one that is more sabre inclined doesn’t seem to produce results if the underlying roster doesn’t change.
Who do you have in mind regarding the last point you make?
I wonder if he means Bo Porter? That was a wholly undeserved axe, however.
Long over due. Look at the long laundry list of Wren’s mistakes and it’s easy to see that this was coming. The demise of the Braves comes down to Wren’s bad signings and and overal lack of fundamentals and team chemistry, of which, point to Fredi’s demise as well.
Coppolella, with his winning background with the Yankees and during the later years of the Braves heyday, deserves the opportunity to lead this team back to respectability. This will be hard to do with the plethora of .200 hitters striking out 30% of the time, but he’s the man to turn it around.
I see more cause for it this year than after 2011, when Boston blew it up and the Braves held steady. This is a flat-out bad team, whereas 2011’s squad was just unlucky. But still, I don’t think this is a good thing. Wren has had a lot of success up until this year, and the GMs who are obviously better than him already have jobs. Rumors are circulating that the Braves may give Dayton Moore a shot, which would make me so angry and frustrated about the franchise’s direction that I might just give up following them.
Jeez he really wasn’t that bad at all. Last season they won the division, 2012 played in the Wild Card game. Yes, the BJ Upton contract is a disaster but locking up Freeman, Simmons, Kimbrel were all good moves. He lost Medlen and Beachy before the season started but Harang was a real good signing. It was thought that Brian McCann would be a huge loss but that didn’t turn out bad at all, Gattis has been better. It just seems like a case where you can’t fire 25 players so…
There’s definitely some truth to this. Yes, Wren made mistakes, but I’m not sure he deserved to be canned. The Braves still have a good core and I know a bunch of teams that Wren could manage better than the current managers who are trying to do the same wright now.
It’s interesting that Jardinero says “the FA contracts seemed like bad ideas on the day they were signed” because I saw a lot pundits lauding Wren shortly after he locked up the current core of the team (both those players developed internally and acquired via free agency or trade) for the foreseeable future under cost-controlled contracts.
But here we find out what happens if the core doesn’t produce results like the scouts / saber guys projected: the great moves to lock up guys for many years is now seen as a long-term burden and flexibility is impaired.
I have read recent articles stating that the team is talented but does not seem motivated. IF that is true, I am not sure if a change in manager can rectify the problem, but I strongly suspect the Braves will seek to find out as Wren’s successor is likely to quickly show Gonzalez the door.
“But here we find out what happens if the core doesn’t produce results like the scouts / saber guys projected: the great moves to lock up guys for many years is now seen as a long-term burden and flexibility is impaired.”
The “core” extensions have mostly worked out fine. Freddie Freeman has demonstrated that last year was not a blip. Teheran has pitched extremely well results-wise. Kimbrel has been his usual self, although of course the injury risk still looms. Simmons has been the only player who really came out of his extension and fell flat on his face, but even so, his contract now looks like a fair deal rather than the steal it had the potential to be.
Also, unfortunately I don’t see the next GM firing Fredi Gonzalez, at least not immediately. But then, a few weeks ago I would have said there was no chance Wren would lose his job, so my predictions about Braves’ personnel management are probably not to be trusted.
“But here we find out what happens if the core doesn’t produce results like the scouts / saber guys projected.”
Justin Upton and Freeman have produced, and Evan Gattis has hit better than most people expected. The problems were the BJ, Uggla and Chris Johnson contracts, and I wasn’t alone in criticizing them at the time they were inked.
It was a bad idea to sign a guy who doesn’t walk, make contact or hit for power?
You don’t say!!!
Sorry, that comes off as weirdly hostile considering that I’m agreeing with you that the Chris Johnson contract is, was and always will be atrocious.
The parallels between Wren and Jocketty are impossible for me to ignore. A good run that led to quick playoff exits. Money spent that now looks questionable (hello Votto, Jospeph and Phillips, Brandon). Managers that are/were sub awful (Dusty&Fredi worst buddy cop premise ever). 2014 Teams that disappoint because dead money killed flexibility. When your peaks are not that high, no room for valleys.
The parallels between Wren and Jocketty are impossible for me to ignore. A good run that led to quick playoff exits. Money spent that now looks questionable (hello Votto, Joseph and Phillips, Brandon). Managers that are/were sub awful (Dusty&Fredi worst buddy cop premise ever). 2014 Teams that disappoint because dead money killed flexibility. When your peaks are not that high, no room for valleys.
The comment so nice, he made it twice!
Dusty & Fredi….#TrueDetectiveSeason2
Anon21 appears to be a friend or family member of Frank, if not the man himself. Lots of people, myself included, criticized the Uggla and Upton deals right from the moment they happened. Lots of people, myself included, said that Wren overpaid to lock up Freeman, Kimbrel, Teheran, Simmons, and Johnson. Some of those contracts look tolerable so far and will probably stay that way, but all of them were above the established market for players with their respective service time, hence the Dave Cameron columns touting them as evidence of a “new market.”
When you spend that much money you had better produce results or you deserve to be replaced. The frustrating news for the Braves is that they’re locked into Wren’s decisions for many years to come, so they have to hope for the best from the players already under contract since it doesn’t appear that they will be adding much for a good while.