Goldman’s baseball quotables #10: Justice for Braves GM Wren?
The Braves were eliminated this weekend, and rumors that general manager Frank Wren was on the way out were confirmed when he was dismissed Monday morning.
Atlanta Braves Executive Vice President and General Manager Frank Wren may have had a similar exchange with any of his three sons on Sunday after the Braves were eliminated from postseason competition. Ring Lardner imagined the exchange for his 1920 novella The Young Immingrunts, but it works just as well here, with the once-great franchise (and since it’s soon to move out of the city, perhaps the once-Atlanta franchise as well) struggling to avoid a losing record for the second time in Wren’s seven-season stewardship.
Rumors that Wren’s normally complacent overlords will soon call for his head are circulating, and it may soon be time to see what another GM can do with a team that has roughly $45 million in zombie bucks devoted to B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla, not to mention $23.5 million assigned to Chris Johnson, who could always once again overcome his lack of patience, power, or defensive ability by hitting .320 again, but probably won’t.
The Braves suffered a series of blows to their pitching this year that would have crippled any team. Kris Medlen went down for a second Tommy John surgery, and Brandon Beachy did too. (Not to be outdone, reliever Jonny Venters signed up for his third.) Mike Minor was a mess all season long and exited his last start with ominous “discomfort.” Julio Teheran was as good as had been advertised for what feels like years; Ervin Santana and emergency pick-up Aaron Harang gave the team innings at about a league-average level of production, and sophomore lefty Alex Wood was excellent once the team figured out he wasn’t a reliever. Given good bullpen work, a strong offense, and some luck and they might have gotten away with at least a wild-card spot despite all the injuries.
The Library of America's Ring Lardner edition contains two of the three volumes of his "The Busher" series of baseball stories, other great baseball tales such as "Alibi Ike," and other American classics such as "Haircut" (which could be a Coen brothers film). There are also non-fiction pieces on baseball and other sports, letters, bizarre plays with stage instructions such as, "The curtain is lowered for seven days to denote the lapse of a week," and other material. The main thing missing is his successful collaboration with George S. Kaufman, "June Moon." It's a good chance to catch up with a writer who isn't taught in school because somehow novels > short stories and Lardner's general weirdness.
Alas, the strong offense part just didn’t happen. The impact of hitting coaches can be vastly exaggerated, it does seem reasonable to say that something has gone very wrong, and whatever Wren’s destiny, hitting coaches Greg Walker (in his third season with the team) and Scott Fletcher didn’t have the answers to this team’s problems. Again, maybe Ted Williams couldn’t fix B.J. Upton. Perhaps Jason Heyward’s home-run power is gone for good. Andrelton Simmons might have gone backwards regardless, and so on -- a team that gives 150 plate appearances each to Uggla and Ramiro Pena is only going to get so far regardless of who is coaching or running things... Which brings us back to Wren, who he signed, who he hired to manage, coach, and what changes he did or didn’t try to make to rescue the team from its slide.
The Braves were 17-9 through the end of April, and in first place in the National League East as late as July 18, but they never could pull away. From May 1 until the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline they went 55-56, and that should have been a clue, when they were just 1.5 games out, that more than Emilio Bonifacio was needed. Deprived of additional aide, they had another .500 month in August, and have gone 4-14 so far this month.
Maybe it was the complacent overlords, or the team’s relatively weak farm system -- you can’t trade what you don’t have. In the end, a general manager’s job is to advocate for resources, and inasmuch as it is tough to voluntarily give up a job of which there are but 30 in the world, sometimes it is better to be right than employed. It’s a self-respect thing.
Or maybe it was just Wren who was complacent. We don’t know. If the rumors are true, the results will be the same: to paraphrase Monty Python, this is an ex-Wren. The state motto of Georgia is “Wisdom, Justice, Moderation.” The Braves are showing moderation by taking October off this year. We’ll see if they show similar moderation towards their general manager... Or will it be justice?
UPDATE: Wren was terminated on Monday morning, about 12 hours after I wrote the above. We’ll have a fuller take on the dismissal and Wren’s tenure in office in short order, but a from-the-hip reaction to this here post is that the next Braves general manager will have a lot to overcome. As long as their drafting and development operation was functioning at a high level, they could overcome their payroll sinking relative to the competition, but it hasn’t been that way for awhile. Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, Andreleton Simmons, and Evan Gattis are all good and sometimes great players in their way, but they all have their limitations and it’s not clear who is coming behind them. Between the dry farm, the bad contracts, and the possibility of Justin Upton leaving town after 2015, it might be some time before the new guy can get things sorted out -- especially with upper management and ownership remaining the same.
It doesn’t necessarily follow that the Braves are headed for a period of being a bad team, and in fact it’s easy to see fixes applied that could once again make them a very good one. But those will require spending or very canny trades, things that Wren couldn’t do and might be beyond anyone. It’s a pity that things were allowed to reach this point, injuries or not, and as I suggested above, the ultimate responsibility does seem to lie with Wren.
See More:
