Atlanta Braves hire GM Alex Anthopoulos
By Fred Owens
Trades and regrets
AA’s first trade saw Roy Halladay leave for Philadelphia for three players that never really worked out. Prior to the 2011 season AA managed to convince the Angels to take the Vernon Wells contract in its entirety and received two very good players in return. He then traded one of them, away for a shaky closer.
AA seems to love big trades and the 2012 season saw him make a series of multiplayer trades. In July 2012 he sent seven players to the Astros and received four in return. The trade was effectively Musgrove and Frankie Francisco for J.A. Happ and Brandon Lyon.
On November 19, 2012 he sent Henderson Alvarez, Anthony DeSclafani, Yunel Escobar, Adeiny Hechavarria, Jake Marisnick, Jeff Mathis and Justin Nicolino to the Marlins. The Marlins sent Emilio Bonifacio, John Buck, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes and cash to Toronto.
Atlanta Braves
December 12th saw him trade Wuilmer Becerra, John Buck, Travis d’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard to the New York Mets for R.A. Dickey, Mike Nickeas and Josh Thole.
In November 2014 he sent Franklin Barreto, Kendall Graveman, Brett Lawrie and Sean Nolin to the Oakland for Josh Donaldson.
His final season and last gasp attempt to win before taking a different position saw him embark on a July trading frenzy. First he traded Jesus Tinoco (minors), Miguel Castro, Jeff Hoffman and Jose Reyes to the Rockies for LaTroy Hawkins and Troy Tulowitzki. Two days later he sent Matt Boyd, Jairo Labourt and Daniel Norris to the Tigers for a rental of David Price.
The next day Jake Brentz , Nick Wells and Rob Rasmussen headed to Seattle in exchange for Mark Lowe. He then pivoted and sent Jimmy Cordero and Alberto Tirado to the Phillies for Ben Revere.
The need to trade multiple players so often came from a lack of high quality players in their system. When AA stepped aside, the Blue Jays were an old team with one top 100 player and a season ending payroll of $135,728,804. Today they are teetering on whether to embark on their own rebuild.
A quick trip to LA
After Mark Shapiro took over in Toronto, AA worked out the remainder of his contract then took a position with the Dodgers as VP of baseball operations. That move must have been a culture shock. Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi are far removed from the culture he knew for so long in Toronto.
The Dodgers are a more statistically oriented team. As we saw in the World Series, sometimes they take those statistics to extremes and suffer as a result. How much AA absorbed while there and how he sees the uses of advanced metric is something to watch for.
After two years in LA he’s now in charge or cleaning up the mess created by his predecessors and fielding a competitive team in 2018.