MLB drops hammer on Atlanta Braves John Coppolella banned
By Fred Owens
The thing Atlanta Braves fans simultaneously wanted to see and dreaded arrived today as MLB formally announced punishment for John Coppolella’s rules violations.
This afternoon MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred released a lengthy statement giving details and rational for the punishment; the full text on the preceding link. The greatest impact comes from damaging to the lower levels of the Braves system and restricting rebuilding it through international signings.
While what you’re about to read sounds pretty bad, it could well have been worse.
Atlanta Braves side-load money to sigh prospects
Side-loading is the process of loading an app on your phone that the operating system doesn’t normally allow. Side-loading also describes how Atlanta Braves former GM attempted to bypass the rules and get what he wanted. The following is extracted from the Commissioner’s statement with my attempt to remove the stilted wording so it’s easier to understand
"“. . . The Braves cooperated throughout the investigation . . . senior Baseball Operations officials responsible . . .are no longer employed by the Braves. I am confident that Terry McGuirk, John Schuerholz, Alex Anthopoulos and their staffs . . .(will) ensure that this . . .never occurs again . . .”"
McGuirk kicked out the crooks and ask that doing so be taken as a mitigating factor.
". . .the Braves circumvented international signing rules from 2015 through 2017 . . .(signing) five players . . . (for) bonuses lower than . . (the Braves) had agreed. . . (the Braves added the missing money by) inflating the signing bonus to another player. . . exempt from their signing pool because he qualified as a ‘foreign professional’ . . . the Braves could have signed all of the 2015-16 players . . . (for the money promised but) would have exceeded their signing bonus pool by more than five percent . . . (restricting them from providing) contracts with bonuses greater than $300,000."
The Braves promised five players more than they could give within the rules. Then they signed a player who otherwise would not have been signed and had him slip money it to the other five signees under the table. This was designed to circumvent the MLB rules.
"“As a result . .(the Braves signed) nine high-value players. . . who would have been unavailable. . .(if) the Club accurately accounted for its (2015-2016) signings . . . These players were Juan Contreras, Yefri del Rosario, Abrahan Gutierrez, Kevin Maitan, Juan Carlos Negret, Yenci Peña, Yunior Severino, Livan Soto and Guillermo Zuniga. . . (they did it again) in 2016 and 2017 . . . (and) signed Brandol Mezquita, Angel Rojas and Antonio Sucre . . . (sending) additional money to those players’ agents by signing other players affiliated with their agents to contracts with inflated bonuses . . .(here’s the punishment) I am releasing these players from their contracts . . .and declaring them free agents . . ."
Simply their plan went undetected in 2015-16 so they did it again. Since the signings violated MLB rules the players are free agents. In the Red Sox incident the players were seen to have done knowingly done nothing wrong so they were allowed keep the money. This is likely the case for these prospects as well.