Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: maybe Ken Rosenthal was onto something?

What is really going on behind the scenes at SunTrust Park?  And will things get smoothed out enough to construct a contending team soon?

At the end of August, Ken Rosenthal wrote about Atlanta Braves Front Office friction in what was interpreted as a ‘power struggle’.  At the time, there were some shuffles of responsibility for some of the roles among the senior leadership:

• Dave Trembley – was farm director; now a ‘field coordinator’
• Dom Chiti – was pitching director, now is farm director
• Dave Wallace – was a special assistant, now is pitching director
• Billy Ryan – was in Director of Baseball Ops, now becomes a Special Asst to the GM
• Rick Williams – was a Special Assistant, now a major league scout… which could be merely a clarification of what he was actually doing.
• Uber scout Roy Clark – was a Special Assistant, now ‘Senior Advisor on Amateur Scouting’.  Again, this may be more reflective of his actual duties, rather than providing a generic title.

At the time, I dismissed a lot of this extra commentary from Rosenthal as more smoke than fire.

But now there are additional moves:

The Braves didn’t have a ‘director of player personnel’, so this is certainly newsworthy.  Those with such titles are often made responsible for the product on the field – especially at the major league level, but not limited to that.

Perry Minasian (37 this year) is a scout by trade.  It runs in his family, too.  He has a brother – Zack (34) – who is a special advisor for scouting with the Brewers.  Apparently a lot of people get them – and elder Zack Sr. (who once worked for both Tommy Lasorda and Bobby Valentine) – mixed up.

There has not been an announcement about the exact level of influence that Perry will have over the decision-making process in putting players on the field.  But there are some guesses that I would like to offer:

• Coppy may have hired him to delegate some of his own workload
• Since he has never had this role before, Minasian probably will be seen more as an advisor than a decision-maker.  At least in the short-term.
• In the role of a pro-scout, Minasian should have detailed knowledge about virtually every major league player, so his focus will likely be based on the Braves major league roster and how to improve it.

Timing is Everything?

Then there’s the timing involved.  Coming just after the Rosenthal piece, this could certainly be looked at as more fuel to the fire.  Then there’s this blistering bit:

That’s … strong.  It also comes from Jeff Wren – brother of Frank Wren.  Both were ousted in the Front Office purge three years ago next week.  For the record, Jeff denies that either he or Frank provided any information to Ken Rosenthal… and frankly it wouldn’t make sense for either to do so (though Jeff is clearly hinting at something in today’s tweet).

You’ll probably think this is just a rambling, vengeful lashing-out on Jeff’s part, but other than the above, his twitter timeline doesn’t betray that.

Still, knowing this information was out there, Minasian opted to dump the Blue Jays and come to Atlanta.  So why leave a team he’d been with since 2009 – despite a promotion last off-season?

Could be a conflict with new GM Ross Atkins.  Could be that he’s seeing a Blue Jays’ rebuild on the immediate horizon and didn’t want to stick around (and perhaps be blamed) for the lean years to come.  It could also be that the Braves are gearing up for a busy off-season and wanted an additional voice of experience in the process.

For new AGM Adam Fisher, the reasons are more clear:  a straight-up promotion from his former role as Director of Baseball Operations with the Mets (since 2013).

But whatever the reasons, it does appear that changes continue to be made in the leadership of the Braves, and that tends to bolster Rosenthal’s argument.

Rather than seeing it as ‘Schuerholz vs. Coppy and Hart’, though, Wren’s take sounds much more like Coppy having trouble inside his own house.

Next: Meanwhile... Big Bats, Big Result

Still – with all of these shuffles – there has been no known mass exodus… at least not yet.  Once the season ends, we’ll watch for that, as such would be a more clear sign of internal issues than what we’ve seen so far.