John Hart’s 1st Hire is Interesting
John Hart Hires Yankee Scout Gordon Blakeley
Baseball America gets credit for breaking this story: a long-time Yankee minor-league director and scout has now left that organization after over 20 years of service… and joined the Braves as a “special assistant” to John Hart.
“At least on an interim basis,” as that article puts it.
This could just be bigger news from the Yankees’ side of the equation, since it follows the departure of Mark Newman, their senior VP of baseball operations, who had also been with the club for a considerable length of time. Nonetheless, there is some intrigue for Atlanta fans, since BA had once ranked Blakeley in their top 10 list of General Manager candidates – way back in 2003. That list turned out to be fairly solid over the past decade.
For the last several years, Gordon has concentrated on the Latin “market” of players for the Yankees. In late 2010, Blakeley was implicated in a mild scandal involving the Yankees and their International Scouting department. The allegations were that there was a 4-year period in which the Yankees were using false documents, bribes and more to land players in the international market. There was a grievance case, settled by the commissioner’s office that settled the case detailed in a book called Pinstripe Defection, which dated back to 2003.
On a more positive note – the reason that Robinson Cano is pictured above is because Blakeley was said to be “instrumental” in getting Cano signed with the Yankees.
Trying to Read This
There are two ways to look at this new hiring. The first is obvious – that this is a precursor to offering the Atlanta GM job to Blakeley. But there’s another possibility, which I prefer since I have to believe that if the (roughly) 60-year-old Blakeley were to be hired as GM, then no “precursor” would be necessary.
John Coppolella cited Blakeley (and Newman, for that matter) among his baseball mentors as he has risen through the ranks. Coppolella was with the Yankees before joining the Braves in 2006. It is reasonably possible that Hart wishes to surround Coppolella with an experienced mind that he is already familiar with before handing over the reins to the relative youngster.
If nothing else, this hire should certainly serve to mark a significant improvement of the International presence for the Braves – which would certainly be welcomed.