The Atlanta Braves, Frank Wren, and Kevin Towers

We would like to express our condolences to the family of former baseball executive Kevin Towers… and note some curious history.

There have been a lot of tributes that have been made to Kevin Towers over the past day following his passing from a rare and aggressive thyroid cancer. That includes this piece from Ken Rosenthal. But there’s an Atlanta Braves connection of some note.

Most of the comments about Towers have centered around his personality and that he allowed himself to to live and not stay in character as a General Manager on a 24/7 basis. Even the photo used for this post has him hitting golf balls for charity events… even from the roof of a nearby hotel into his own stadium!

In 1995, though, there was a hiring decision made that could have changed the fate of the Braves franchise into the next full decade.

At that time, of course, the Braves were in the midst of their “run”, having just won the World Series. San Diego was heading in a completely different direction.

In 1993, Towers was the scouting director of the Padres, working for Randy Smith – then the youngest General Manager in baseball history (29 when he took that role). When the GM role became vacant in 1995, the team didn’t initially offer Towers the position. Instead, they preferred another young up-and-comer who was working for Dave Dombrowski in Miami – one Franklin E. Wren.

As the story was retold by Steve Phillips this morning on MLB Network Radio/XM, Wren was offered a 2 year deal as the San Diego General Manager. But Wren was concerned about the club’s commitment to him – that a 2 year stint wasn’t really long enough to justify moving his family across the country. So Wren ultimately declined the offer, opting to stay in the South (he’s originally from St. Petersburg, FL).

Towers then got the nod, and what happened from there was fairly interesting. In San Diego, the Padres rebounded immediately: a first place finish in both 1996 and 1998, getting to the World Series in 1998. After some additional scuffling, the team made it back to the playoffs in 2005-06 before falling back again by 2009, which ended Towers’ run there.

Meanwhile, the Marlins won the World Series in 1997 while Wren was still there as the AGM, so despite differing methods of getting there, both teams, it could be argued, benefited from Wren staying in South Florida.

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Of course after that, Wren – after a year in Baltimore that ended poorly – joined the Braves in 1999, eventually being promoted to the GM chair in 2007, a role that lasted a week short of the 2014 season’s end.

Had Wren ended up in San Diego, though, a lot of things would have been different, with the intervening decade being shaped much differently – especially for the Braves. We can’t know whether his tenure would have been just that originally-offered 2 years or more like that of Towers’ lengthy run.

None of that is to cast aspersions on Wren for that time with Atlanta – it merely is to note that things would have undoubtedly been different had he been in San Diego and not available for John Schuerholz to hire.

Next: Not just old-timers, but all-timers

In fact, given a different choice from 1995, you might even be able to conjure up a scenario in which Wren just now was taking over in Atlanta. Interesting to ponder.

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