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Braves News: Scouting director Dana Brown leading candidate for Astros GM position

By Eric Cole

WASHINGTON - JUNE 9: Dana Brown, director of scouting for the Washington Nationals, and Mike Rizzo, Assistnat GM and Vp of Baseball Operations talk during the Major League baseball draft on June 9, 2009 at Nationals Park in Washington D.C. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON - JUNE 9: Dana Brown, director of scouting for the Washington Nationals, and Mike Rizzo, Assistnat GM and Vp of Baseball Operations talk during the Major League baseball draft on June 9, 2009 at Nationals Park in Washington D.C. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images) /
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The Atlanta Braves have been pretty fortunate in recent years to not lose too many coaches or executives to getting poached by other organizations. Other than Perry Minasian heading to the Angels to take over their GM spot and hitting coach Jose Castro going to the White Sox this offseason, the Braves have largely been able to keep not only most of their roster together, but their organization as a whole.

One thing that has allowed the Braves to remain competitive has been their success in getting the most out of their draft picks under scouting director Dana Brown. While its impossible to get every draft pick right, Brown’s draft classes have given the Braves some big time contributors (Michael Harris II, Spencer Strider) as well as some important trade capital such as Shea Langeliers and Ryan Cusick.

Brown has long been rumored to be interested in moving up the executive ladder and connected to GM openings in the past, but it looks like the Astros are giving him a long look for their GM spot.

While the Braves would be losing out on a genuinely strong scouting director, it would be hard to blame Dana if he ended up heading to Houston for their top job. Their roster is loaded in the big leagues and Brown is uniquely qualified to help the Astros reload in the minor league ranks. The downside for the Brown being that the Astros’ owner is meddlesome and might fire him if he has a bad day or as soon as he gets a couple good draft classes in the minor leagues.

Amateur scouting season is cranking up very soon, so we can expect that a decision on Brown’s future will be coming very soon. The Braves will want to have a plan in place to run their scouting operations for the spring and the Astros, well, need to have someone running their front office.

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