Braves Fire GM Frank Wren

by
September 22, 2014

The Braves have had a pretty lousy season, and General Manager Frank Wren has lost his job because of it. The team announced today that John Hart will take over as interim GM.

Speculation to date has focused on Hart or former GM John Schuerholtz taking more active roles in the baseball operations department, and the placement of Hart as interim GM, leading a formal GM search that includes Schuerholtz and Bobby Cox, seems to confirm those reports. Previous rumors have suggested that the most likely outcome is that either Hart or Schuerholtz will directly oversee baseball operations, with assistant GM John Coppolella getting promoted to the GM role.

Eno did an interview with Coppolella back at the 2010 winter meetings, which you can read at that link.





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

36 Comments
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D
9 years ago

Will Fredi and Walker survive? Wren made some free agent mistakes, but have mixed feelings about this…

0
Bill
9 years ago
Reply to  D

It’s hard to fault Wren for the free agent signings. He signed guys other people liked too for fair contracts. It’s not his fault they fell off the cliff. The Escobar and Harang deals were nice this year. He lost a large chunk of his starting rotation before the first pitch was thrown and his team will still finish near .500. Wren’s made mistakes, but there are far worse GMs and I don’t think this season should have led to his removal. If Philly sacked Amaro today and hired Wren, I wouldn’t be too unhappy.

1
jardinero
9 years ago
Reply to  Bill

Hate to see anyone get sacked, but the FA contracts seemed like bad ideas on the day they were signed, and they definitely didn’t turn out well. The farm system has also become much weaker on his watch.

0
Anon21
9 years ago
Reply to  jardinero

The Upton contract looked fine when it was signed. Absolutely no one in baseball predicted what happened to B.J. Upton. No one can even explain it even now that it’s happened. The criticism of Wren over that contract is sheer hindsight bias.

-1
Anthony
9 years ago
Reply to  jardinero

Anon21, a lot of people worried about the Upton contract the day it was signed. I would have rather the Braves offered Bourn the exact contract Cleveland gave him. He fit the need a lot more and was a good Braves the year and a half he was here.

2
Anon21
9 years ago
Reply to  jardinero

Wren had more knowledge of Bourn than any other GM, and chose to let him walk. That decision looks like a good one now, even if the decision on who to replace him blew up in Wren’s face. The only NL East team that came out of the 2012 CF Sweepstakes smiling is the Nationals, and I think it’s fair to say that very few people thought Denard Span was going to outplay B.J. Upton in 2013 and 2014.

And again, no one thought B.J. Upton would crater the way he has. “Worrying” about the contract is one thing, but saying that Wren should have seen this inexplicable collapse coming is stupid.

1
Steve
9 years ago
Reply to  jardinero

Few people thought Span would outplay Upton? What?! I think most Fangraphs readers would’ve have picked Span over Upton the day that contract was signed! The Upton deal was bad the day it was signed and anyone who knew about BJ Upton and his past KNEW it was a bad signing.

8
Well-Beered Englishman
9 years ago
Reply to  jardinero

Agreed, I believe 80% of us would have chosen Span over B.J. Upton. Dave Cameron called the Span trade the heist of the offseason and commented that the Nationals got a better player than the Braves did, for far less.

10
Dovif
9 years ago
Reply to  jardinero

The mets did well in 2012. They added Byrd who became Herrera and gave the cf job to the best cf in the nl east atm

0
Anon21
9 years ago
Reply to  Bill

Okay, regardless of retrospective comparisons between Denard Span and B.J. Upton, the larger point is that the Upton signing looked like an unspectacular but reasonable deal when it occurred. No one foresaw Upton’s complete loss of hitting ability. To use Upton as Exhibit A in the case against Wren is pure hindsight bias.

1
Steve
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

It did not look like a reasonable deal to anyone on this website. Not even my friend who is OBSESSED with ATL was happy about it, he created a twitter handle called “Did BJ Strike Out Today.” It was a terrible, terrible signing. Everyone foresaw regression coming from BJ. Everyone. I don’t think Wren should’ve gotten fired because of it, alone, but it was terrible and it should not have been done.

2
Anon21
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/b-j-upton-braves-reach-hefty-predictable-agreement/ :

[T]he Upton contract looks a lot more sensible [than Andre Ethier’s extension]. It’s not so small that the Braves look to be getting a bargain. It’s not so big as to resemble a potential albatross. It just seems like a fair deal that ties Upton to Georgia.

Why, look at that, it’s from this very website! By a dude who maybe knows a bit more about player valuation and projection than “Steve”!

3
Bubber Jonnard
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

Glancing at the FG article analyzing B.J.’s signing back in the winter of 2012, it looks fairly balanced between positive & negative responses. (“Dick Whitman” got it more right than anyone. Deal indeed turned out to be a “monstrosity.”)

0
Well-Beered Englishman
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

That author was wrong about “potential albatross,” but saying that Upton was a better deal than the Ethier extension is like saying going to Vegas is slightly smarter than setting your money on fire.

3
Anon21
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

Okay, further down in the same article:

He was still valuable in 2012. He did still post a sub-.300 OBP. Even in a run-suppressing ballpark in a run-suppressing league, it’s a little weird to see that turn into a five-year mega-contract.

But it did, and it strikes me as being perfectly reasonable. That Upton has been changing his game as a hitter doesn’t necessarily offer any compelling clues as to what his future will look like. We might as well stick with our more basic projections, and they say that Upton will be fine.

Hind. Sight. Bias.

1
Steve
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

Anon, look at his metrics. In 2012 he was making less contact and his K rate was unsustainable… it was going to go up. His power numbers were unsustainable for other reasons. His offense that year was an anomaly and it wasn’t going to happen again in 2013. Everyone who studies offensive metrics knew it. They knew the Braves would not be getting 2012 Rays B.J Upton. The pace he was putting up was not sustainable. And now you have 2013 and 2014 B.J.

1
Billy
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

Yeah, I’m sorry, I have to throw my hat into the ring on behalf of the “I never liked that deal crowd.” No hindsight involved. I didn’t predict Upton would be THIS awful, but I thought it was a bad contract. I’ve never really been a fan of toolsy players like Upton (Rasmus being another example) who have high K rates and are wildly inconsistent. I find they can permanently turn into nothing very quickly.

That said, I didn’t think this was enough to fire Wren. Also, what about his deal for the OTHER Upton? Even if he’s more patience-and-power slugger than 5 tool outfielder now, he’s still very good.

0
joser
9 years ago
Reply to  Anon21

Anytime you look at the comments for any deal, you’re going to find a range from “OMG this is the greatest deal ever” to “OMG this will destroy the franchise” — more or less. (Aside from the odd exception, like the Veron Wells trade). In retrospect, some of those people will always be exactly right… but they’re almost never consistently the same people. The guy smugly slapping himself on the back for his perfect “analysis” of one deal will be the one quietly hoping nobody remembers his comments on another.

Not that this is anything anybody here shouldn’t already know.

1