What is a GM now?

With the news of John Hart taking over the role of President of Baseball Operations, the first question that was asked was whether that meant that John Coppolella’s title would be changing to General Manager.  According to MLB Trade Rumors, it appears that the team intends to leave Coppolella in the role of Assistant General Manager while expanding his role with the eye of him taking over the job in 2017, the team’s first season in their new Cobb County stadium.

This has led to a number of questions about the role of General Manager.  If the Braves are comfortable with not having anyone in their organization with that title, is that saying that the title itself holds very little weight in the construction of a team?  Recent hirings have indicated a move away from the General Manager being the key point in the organization for how the major league team and minor league organization are structured.  Theo Epstein was hired as President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs with a friend working in the General Manager role in Jed Hoyer (who also has the title of Executive Vice President).  The Dodgers recently announced the hiring of Andrew Friedman away from the Tampa Bay Rays in the role of President of Baseball Operations to work under Stan Kasten, who holds the title of President and CEO.  The current rumors are that Friedman will hire friend Josh Byrnes to be his General Manager after Ned Colletti was reassigned in the organization.

The Braves currently have the following for baseball structure (different people are in place for the business/marketing side of the club, this is for baseball only): President John Schuerholz, President of Baseball Operations John Hart, Assistant General Manager John Coppolella, Scouting Director Brian Bridges, and four “Special Assistant to the GM” roles: Lee Elia, Roy Clark, Gordon Blakely, and Rick Williams.  This seems like a large amount of people who have input in the decisions of the organization until you look at the Dodgers structure and realize that the Scouting Director, who likely has one of the top five most influential voices in a room for the Braves, rates roughly 10th in the new structuring of the Dodgers front office.  It seems rather than having the one person who is the end-all, be-all guy in the room, teams are taking a conglomerate approach to structure of the team.

How did we get here?

Baseball has been considered a business since the days of Albert Spalding, who compared paying baseball players to paying other entertainers, and the idea that baseball players are paid due to their entertaining ability has been really at the basis for payment every since.  Just like the structure of many plays and movies of the early 1900s, the owner was also the operator and made all the major decisions for the club as far as hiring/firing/talent acquisition.  The first person to have the title of General Manager was William Evans of the Cleveland Indians in 1927, and teams slowly hired general managers who were in charge of everything about the organization from the team on the field to the concessions and tickets to the hiring of radio announcers.  Much like many things in baseball, the structure remained unchanged until one of the more influential court decisions affecting baseball in history – the Curt Flood case which opened the door to the McNally/Messersmith case granting free agency for players.  This led to a much more business-led approach and division of duties in the front office, creating the modern idea of general manager as the guy who oversees the major league and minor league rosters, personnel in scouting/coaching/management positions, and representing ownership and the team to the media.  That model has been slowly split apart since the 1990s, and interestingly enough, the role of President of Baseball Operations has really switched positions and responsibilities in the last 15 years.  Many won’t remember, but Theo Epstein was the Director of Baseball Operations under General Manager Kevin Towers in San Diego, and the tweak to the title changing “Director” to “President” has allowed that position to go from under the guise of the GM to the boss/partner with the General Manager instead.

So what does this mean for the Braves?

Those who are waiting for Dayton Moore to finish the World Series to accept the GM job and come back to the Braves are going to be sadly disappointed.  Those who are frustrated that the Braves really haven’t signed a GM haven’t really examined how baseball works now.  The Braves utilize a multifaceted approach to their front office, and they have a young man who is under 40 years old being groomed to take over as the General Manager in 2017 or 2018, and they’ve employed a guy as their President of Baseball Operations in John Hart who’s done an exemplary job of grooming young GMs in the past with the Cleveland Indians grooming Mark Shapiro and with the Texas Rangers grooming Jon Daniels.  We as Braves fans would be very lucky to have John Coppolella follow the paths of those two.