Braves Front Office Aftershocks Continue

Two weeks after dismissing General Manager Frank Wren, the purge of “Wren people” continues while John Hart is reshaping the Braves Front Office staff in significant ways.  Several personnel announcements were made yesterday – here’s a full slate of things we know as the purge widens:

Out

• Frank Wren – General Manager
• Bruce Manno – assistant GM, director of Player Development
• Jeff Wren – scout and brother of Frank
• UPDATE:  Johnny Almaraz – Director of International Scouting and Operations.  Hired by Philadelphia.  This had been rumored since Sept. 26th… confirmed today.  Was with Braves since 2010 (hired by Wren).

In

• John Hart – interim GM
• Gordon Blakeley – special assistant to the GM, long-time international scout for the Yankees
• Roy Clark – special assistant to the GM.  More on him later.
• Brian Bridges – promoted to Scouting Director
• Dave Trembley – Director of Player Development (was Bo Porter‘s bench coach at Houston)
• Jonathan Schuerholz – Assistant Director, Player Development (had been managing the Rome Braves)

The Significance – it’s about scouting

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There have been stories leaking out about personality conflicts with Wren and Manno on one side and long-time Braves people (‘

/John Schuerholz’ people) on the other.  We have openly speculated here that it was those kinds of people conflicts that ultimately lead to Wren’s demise.

Fred told us about this as well

, which included specifics on the loss of pitching guru

.

One has to guess whether personality conflicts with Wren played a part in this departure, but in 2009, the Braves suffered an enormous loss when scout extraordinaire Roy Clark left to join the Nationals – joining former Braves’ President Stan Kasten.  Clark had been with the team for 22 years to that point.  It was said at the time that Clark wanted to oversee both player development (the minor leagues) and scouting departments.  He had that opportunity arise with the Nationals – something that was not going to happen under Wren as Bruce Manno was hired in 2007 to run the minor league system.

Apparently, the grass wasn’t as green with the Nats, as Clark left in 2013 for the Dodgers.  Nonetheless, his heart was still back in Braves country as he’s now been coaxed back into the fold – now that Wren is gone.

How good is Roy Clark?  His first draft pick for Atlanta was somebody named Adam Wainwright.  Quoting from another source:

"He joined the Braves when they were a laughingstock in the late 80s and helped build arguably the best pipeline of talent in all of baseball over the course of 20 years. When he joined the Nationals at the end of the 2009 season they were thought of as a laughingstock too. They are no longer."

So now – in just 2 weeks – the front office has significantly bolstered its scouting in two ways:

• the return of Clark (think:  ‘American scouting‘)
• the addition of Blakeley (think:  ‘International scouting‘)

Hart Has a Plan

Here’s one Wren we need to keep around. Mandatory credit: Alan W. Carpenter, TomahawkTake.com

The returns on these investments will take time, but with these men overseeing the revamped scouting department, Braves’ fans should see a significantly better pipeline ahead, with a returned emphasis on International players.

Under Wren, the farm system rankings have had Atlanta continuing to sink over the past several years.  We had been tempted to write this off as the result of seeing several key players ‘graduate’ to the majors.  But at this point, it’s hard to characterize this weakening as anything other than a deficiency in scouting.

One source I checked now puts Atlanta at 29th of the 30 MLB teams.  Baseball America had Atlanta at 15th in 2007 (when Wren took over), saying at the time they had not been “ranked this low on the list since 1991”.  In 2013, the Braves were 26th on their list.

A wikipedia source cites Wren as being “known for developing a strong farm system”.  That may have been true in the past, but somewhere between the point where he added his own people and seemingly pushed out others, that direction got lost along the way.  John Hart is obviously intent on rectifying those problems – immediately.

More News

The Braves also announced several other changes to the scouting department and front office:

• Rick Williams – returning as Special Assistant to the GM (for a 2nd year – i.e., he wasn’t caught up in the Wren-effect)
• Named 5 major league scouts:  Matt Carroll, Dave Holliday, Ronnie Richardson, Jeff Schugel, Brad Sloan.  UPDATE:  Richardson had been the Director of Minor League Operations.  All of the rest had the titles “Special Assistant to GM”… under Wren.
• Matt Grabowski – promoted:  Assistant Director, Scouting and Analytics
• Ron Knight – promoted:  Manager, Minor League Administration
• A.J. Scola – promoted:  Assistant, Player Development

One more item of particular interest:

• The announcement also stated that Tony DeMacio has been offered ‘a prominent role within the scouting department’.  At the moment, he is listed as ‘Director of Scouting’ – which means he is being offered a demotion.  DeMacio was with the Braves as a scout from 1983-1990, and then again from 2007 to the present.  It is therefore fair to say that he is a ‘Wren guy’.  Sounds like the deck is being cleared to hand that title to Clark or Blakeley.

I must applaud these moves.