This could be misguided, but I think the Braves’ transition from a big-budget, “big market” team to a mid-budget player is complete. And I think JS had a hard time acknowledging it and, therefore, made it more painful than it had to be.
Exhibit A (through about S): the Teshowmethemoney trade. A cash-conscious team like the Braves simply does not deal a passel of top prospects for a star whom a clear-eyed realist knows you don’t have a good chance to keep beyond the next season. It does not make sense. (We cheered the move at the time, but we’re dumb-ass fans, not club executives.)
I think JS refused to believe the Braves were becoming what they now indisputably are. More likely, he knew it but convinced himself otherwise. He wanted to believe that Tex might bring a championship, so he took one last fling at playing with the big spenders. If it works, maybe you win a title and boost revenue. Didn’t work, of course, and the odds of it ever working weren’t good.
I digress, but only to make this point. The transition has been fairly ugly. JS’s insistence on operating the old way only made it worse.
The transition now seems to be, more or less, complete. I’m not saying we’re the Pirates or old Expos or Marlins. On the other hand, operating in the middle range might be harder than running a poor club like that. At least they know what they have to do, sad as it is.
For our braintrust, the path forward has often been less clear, and it will probably stay that way. St. Louis seems to have figured it out the past few seasons with a mid-range payroll. I haven’t done any analysis of their methods, but seems they’ve gotten good production out of some fringe guys and gotten lucky with pitchers as often as not (Piniero, Loshe).
A new Braves owner could open the checkbook, sure. But there might not be a new owner for some years, especially in this economy.
So let’s hope Wren figures out how to navigate as a mid-budget operation. Turns out signing Lowe to a four-year deal for $60 million might not have been the best move, though I think it was/is entirely defensible. Perhaps signing Kawakami wasn’t, but here we are.
I might not be making much sense. I just think the Braves’ financial identity, which is fundamental in today’s game, has changed and the braintrust has not always known how to cope with that change.
–CD
Prediction: Kawakami will look like a bargain after next season, likely pricing himself out a of a third year with the Braves. I’m not as optimistic about Lowe in 2010.
I think Kawakami is signed for 3 years.
My mistake. He’s due a little more than $13 mil over the next two years.
The Braves won’t be getting a new owner until at least 2012 since MLB stated that Liberty had to hold on to the team for at least a 4 and a half year period. If Liberty could’ve done so, I think they would’ve flipped the team already since they only bought the team for tax reasons. Even when 2012 comes, the line of prospective owners will be shorter than was the case in 2007. Arthur Blank could still be interested, of course.
I was just looking at this year’s home schedule. The Braves better kick much ass in the spring if they want any butts in the seats this summer. MLB bent Atlanta over this year. June and July home schedule: Phils, Rays, Royals, Tigers, Nats, Fish, Brewers, Padres. Are you serious?
Nice post… Let’s pour one out for the old Braves, that had their own TV network, and filled more than 50% of the seats.
We’re all about young whipper-snappers and old retreads now. If they’re in their prime, they’re playing somewhere else. The new Atlanta is where ‘The Bucket List’ and ‘High School Musical’ collide.
Bradley’s article that was linked to a previous post really opened my eyes. A corporate entity that purchases a team for a tax break is not going to open up the purse strings. They are simply looking to not lose $ or break even. The Braves need an individual or a group connected to the city purchase the team and take care of it. They may never be a big market team again, but they can at least show an interest in being successful and giving something to it’s fans, preferably a winning ballclub.
A mediocre GM for a mid-market team. Somehow there seems to be a certain balance to that.
Wren, if you’ll recall, had a big hand in building the formidable 1999 Orioles.
Winning baseball is fun and the run was great. So I’m not complaining. The Braves in the run were his Royals of the 70′s and 80′s. Very good, won a world championship but almost always had trouble come playoff time.
Lets see if this sounds familiar; very good pitching, teams built around one or two everyday superstars and the rest were mediocre pieces. Pretty good defense. Then, in the playoffs, they were often beaten by a team that for one year or two had a more formidable everyday lineup. Remember the Yankees of the 70′s then the team that beat the Braves?
Again, I’m not complaining. As a fan, I had a blast. However, the Royals of the aforementioned era and the Braves of the run had something else; a lack of fire when it came to the playoffs.
With one exception; John Smoltz. You always had the impression that he would cut his arm off if it meant a World Series ring. I didn’t get that impression from others. Once Chipper criticized the lack of fire on the team in the mid 90s. He was upbraided for his lack of gentlemanly demeanor.
I understand completely that a lunchpail attitude can lead to the playoffs because you can’t maintain that fire over 162 games. I’m rambling. However, this ties into Wren because there is nobody on this team you can look to on the surface and see that fire when it is needed. We need bats, we need fire and we need better talent evaluators.
If Troy Glaus can’t put butts in the seats in 2010, who can? The 2010 Atlanta Braves – Smell the Excitement!
The only chance to stir up serious ticket sales is to get Mark Lemke the hell back out there!
I remember watching Glaus play in the ’96 Olympics… I hope he can add some of that fire to our squad. But CD is right on the money. Until a person (not a corporation) buys the team, we are mid-market at best.
[...] Operating in a Middle-Budget Market [...]
It stinks in one way, but in another way it’s helpful to the Braves to live under a budget. When you have less money to work with, you become very aware of your resources and very aware of your choices.
The Braves are in another type of transition – a group of young players is approaching arb eligibility (Esco & Jurrjens most notably), and some really good prospects are on the way (Heyward and others). If the Braves make the right choices, they’ll have a nice run the next few years.
2010 is still a transition year in this regard – so luck, health and some key comeback seasons will largely determine how far this team is able to go.
I like Jeff’s post. Bravo fans: The Braves are about to start mowing people down. This new roster Wren is spearheading is loaded. If you look back at last year, as bad as things were for the team offensively in the first few months, the team started on an offensive tear as soon as the roster moves were made and the lineup altered (I will always be a Jeff Francouer fan and he is beginning to maximize his talent via production where he is now, Kelly is a good ballplayer who hits for power but not good enough, and as pissed off as I was when Frank traded Kotchman who was hitting the ball very well for Laroche I see that I was totally wrong and Frank was right as Adam hit for average and 13 home runs in 2 months is awesome, plus McClouth brought in to play center and leadoff) with Prado behind him Chipper Bmac Adam Yunel MattyD we were averaging about 6 runs a game for a couple weeks there. Then somehow everyone went down and the doors fell off. McClouth hurt his leg, Prado suffered from headaches and got depressed, Chipper followed him with a delayed reaction if I’m not mistaken it took another few weeks before Chipper went into the tank, Yunel got hurt. Thank God for McCann and Diaz. So put that team back out there rested and ready. Sandwich Glauss in between Chipper and Bmac. Yuni 6th. Matty and Melky to follow. Chipper mentioned that there was no where to go to get an easy out during that tear they went on when they were together, the shelling of opposing pitchers is about to begin again. Just watch. McClouth is dangerous, Prado is awesome (one of the best young infielders in the game), Chipper was the runner up to the batting champion in 2008 and one of the smartest and skilled hitters to ever swing a bat, Glaus will launch 23 homeruns this year, Bmac is the best hitting catcher in the game (the Twins catcher Mauer is awesome) Yunel is dynamite, Matty proved he is great for an entire season and actually to me he looked like our best hitter in the last month or so), Melky will do as good if not better here with this team than he did in New York. The brass will hand over Heyward’s first time card for punching when they are ready, and when they do we will be in for a treat. As a Braves fan for the past 31 years that I have lived here, I have always felt that we are treated to entertaining baseball. Even when we wore the Baby blues and we lost most games, it was still a treat to see Hubbard out there playing hard, hoping Dale and Bob Horner would knock one over the fence. I like this “Mid Market” team we put together. For me, it is more enjoyable to see the team take shape as it does under our GM’s direction more so now than when we said in the 90′s “well uhhh, who do we want to go out and buy? Do we want Sheffield, Maddux, Drew? Lets buy them all.” I’m not complaining at all JS masterminded the success of the Braves for the past 20 years I just like what we are doing now.
I’ll finish with this about our pitchers. Our bullpen is stacked which takes us to the starters. What happens in a long season of competition such as a major league baseball season when an offense is scoring 6 runs a game on average maybe 10 some days, 2 on others, (just like we did for a stretch after the moves last year) pressure is immediately applied to the opponent. Somewhere, at some moment probably early in the season these thoughts will run through our opponents minds, “Holy smokes, they are drilling our pitcher tonight, and now we got to find a way to make contact with Hudson’s sinking bullets, Hanson’s lasers, JJ is going to be dealing when we face him in a few days, oh no, Derek Lowe is going to be hard to score off of and Kenny is a baller (Kenshin out pitched Major league baseball’s best pitchers last year Halliday and Santana).”
We will win the division with 102 wins 60 losses. In Bobby’s final season managing the Braves, Atlanta wins the ALDS and the NLCS and goes to war with the Yankees in the World Series.
Merry Christmas. Go Braves.
I don’t know about “mowing down”, but I can see us turning into a solid team built around young guys in the near future, as Jeff’s post envisions. It’s what I’ve been advocating for a long time. Hopefully we can be in an ownership situation by then where we can pay most of those guys.
I also need to protest the idea that George Brett and Hal McRae (or Tom Glavine, David Justice or Brian Jordan) lacked playoff fire. That’s total horseshit.
We didn’t lack fire. We lacked a closer.
Congrats to Josh. Longest post on the Office, ever.
There’s some truth to this, but it would also be accurate to say that Wren has just bungled some things in the last 2 offseasons. He did an excellent job at tweaking the roster during the season, but he has misfired again and again in the Hot Stove. You don’t resign Tim Hudson and sign Wagner and Saito when there is the possibility you might not be able to move Derek Lowe and instead be forced to move Vasquez. Wren could have let Hudson go, kept Soriano and Vasquez, and signed a better hitter than Glaus. There’s still some quality relievers out there even now that could have been signed for cheap; there was no rush to sign Wagner and Saito. Being forced to trade your ace for a 4th outfielder is crap.
Ron, it’s crap, but it’s the current state of baseball. Javier would have walked in ten months anyway, and we wouldn’t have Melky (affordable, young, and hit 80 pts higher than Garret with RISP) and Arodys Vizcaino (who is already a big time pitching prospect at 19).
Lotta good stuff here. Tofu is right…many can’t accept the current state of baseball. Someone will overpay for Javy next year. So many fanatics are like Ron E, blind to the facts of the trade. It’s unreasonable for people to think the Braves have the resources to compete with the Yankees, Phillies, and Red Sox. Like my budget at home, it does make every move the the Braves make critical to be a success.
Wuky – Not only was it the longest post on the Office; it was also the longest paragraph in the history of blogging! Impressive work Josh!
We have always been a mid market club. When we had TBS behind us, the TV programming value justified pushing the payroll and operating the team at a “loss”. We don’t have the population of NY, Chi and LA and we don’t have the fan base of Boston or Philly. Without a big TV package or an owner who is doing this for a hobby (and does not care about the bottom line), a mid market club is what we are.
[...] A transition is complete This could be misguided, but I think the Braves’ transition from a big-budget, “big market” team to a [...] [...]
Ron, nobody around here wanted to keep Soriano. Not us, not Wren. We got good value for him for Ramirez but ultimately he’s got a million dollar arm and a five cent heart (to adjust Crash’s phrase just a bit.)