Atlanta Braves Analysis Of Dave O’Brien Timeline

The AJC’s beat writer for the Atlanta Braves, David O’Brien is in Arizona along with GM John Coppolella.  He had a twitter storm of comments yesterday that signal the team’s direction for the next couple of years.

While O’Brien has not yet written up these recent thoughts into a full piece for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, he engaged in an unusually lengthy and informal Q&A with followers that actually shed some light on the near-future Atlanta Braves‘ philosophy.

As an introduction, I will inject an opinion up front:  I have typically been a fan first, which admittedly means that I would like to see the Braves competing better, faster, and with somewhat less regard to future complications as a result.

SunTrust Park is the locus of a new and larger revenue stream for the Braves, yet it still represents only a means to ‘keep up’ and not ‘get ahead’ of their rivals.

One example of that would be my annual advocacy for some big-name player to provide an instant boost to the team.  Some of these names over the years have included Jon Lester, Zack Greinke, Ryan Braun (a special circumstance… the same deal was ultimately made for Matt Kemp), and most recently Justin Verlander.

It will be clear in what follows that this is not the direction that John Coppolella seems headed.  Sure – he wants to build a perennial winner.  It seems his approach – or more to the point, my interpretation of that approach – from this point forward is now somehow different from prior expectations.

That is a bit of a disappointment and it does leave me with some concerns… as I will explain.

I state these things as a disclaimer, as I do not wish my remarks to completely discolor the information here:  O’Brien was kind in passing along the remarks that follow, and it is definitely worth a full discussion.

With that… let’s get started.