Schuerholz stepping down in Atlanta
(links everywhere)
He’s going to become team president (which here, is Chuck Armstrong). While the Braves don’t have a huge number of World Series rings, I wanted to take a second to talk about the scope of his achievement.
I too often gloss over how amazingly hard it is to be a GM. Everyone in every front office works crazy hours for pretty bad pay considering what they do. Being competitive requires many factors out of a GM’s control to come together, and as much as I rag on teams for not exploiting every advantage, there aren’t enough hours to do it, and not enough people to help.
It doesn’t matter if you’re one of the smartest baseball minds in the world, you’ve got to better than the other 29 guys, trade after trade, season after season, even if you’ve got money to work with. Getting to .500 consistently is hard, and that gets lost in transaction analysis of why they picked up one guy on the waivers instead of my favorite guy, or they didn’t ask after someone who later got traded. If .500 was easy, the incompetent clubs would do better and we’d see team records much closer together. Teams like the Royals haven’t struggled for so long because they’re not working at it, or even because they don’t have talented people working for them. We look at teams who experience success with an eye towards whether they’re peaking, and search for signs that they’ll soon be brought to earth, and with good reason: fielding a competitive team, especially one that can get into the playoffs, can cost so much in building it that it can’t be kept up for long.
With that in mind, I look at the long record of success in Atlanta with all kinds of teams, rebuilding constantly, overcoming injuries and issues, always making progress, and I’m a little awed. Few baseball people have been had such success for so long. I don’t know who the Braves might replace him with, but really, there’s no replacing him. Even from the other league, I’m sorry to hear that the game’s going to be a little less competitive
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The Braves announced Schuerholz’s transition on Thursday, while also announcing that longtime assistant Frank Wren has been named executive vice president and general manager.
Wren had served as Schuerholz’s assistant since October 1999, after a one-season stint as the Orioles’ general manger ended in 1999. He has handled the majority of contractual negotiations over the past few years and is highly respected by team chairman Terry McGuirk.
“Frank’s complete and thorough involvement in our baseball operations these past eight years prepares him well for this new role as general manager,” Schuerholz said. “I know Frank will continue to help us put a championship-caliber team on the field and build upon our proud Braves tradition.”
that was from the Braves website–
oh, and they also say “Braves welcome Ichiro, M’s in ’08”
Clearly the Braves must not know what they are doing, since Peter Angelos fired Wren after one season. If he wasn’t good enough for Baltimore…
/sarcasm
Schuerholz turned the Braves from a very bad team to a very good team, and is one of the best ever at roster management. He’ll be missed.
This just opens up another attractive post that Antonetti or another good candidate can choose instead of Seattle.
Nah, they’re filling that in-house with Wren.
No it doesn’t. As others have said, Frank Wren, who has been the Assistant GM for the last seven years, has already been given the job.
Okay, that’s cool. How much less impact on player acquisition does the president have?
Much as I hate the Atlanta fan base it has been impressive to watch the Braves be at the top for so long. Schuerholz will go down as one of the best GM’s the game has ever seen.
Now that’s a job Antonetti might want.
Now that’s a job Antonetti might want.
Why? It’s always hardest to be the successor to someone who has been the best. There’s almost nowhere to go but down. (Like becoming basketball coach at UCLA after John Wooden retires.)
It’s much easier to take a decrepit, mismanaged operation and turn it around. Heck, even if you’re mediocre people will laud you for your fine work.
It’s much easier to take a decrepit, mismanaged operation and turn it around.
Kinda sorta true. I wouldn’t imagine the Baltimore job is terribly attractive for example for as long as Angelos owns/runs the club. I think you’d want to avoid:
a) small payroll/terrible contract burden
b) history of meddling from upper management/ownerhip
c) no commitment to giving GM time to implement their program
d) horrible PR relationship between ownership & media/fanbase
Stuff like past organizational success may or may not play a part in franchise attractiveness.
ah yes– there was some discussion the other evening about would Mattingly want to be the guy to follow Torre, or to be the guy who follows the guy who follows Torre….
“This just opens up another attractive post that Antonetti or another good candidate can choose instead of Seattle.”
Seattle’s GM position isn’t open, so the point is moot.
Why? It’s always hardest to be the successor to someone who has been the best. There’s almost nowhere to go but down
It’s helpful to remember that we’re talking about people who are extremely ambitious and extremely confident. The calculus of whether the last guy sucked or ruled is probably less important to that crowd – they’re all going to believe they can do a better job.
I dunno, if I’m Antonetti or Schuerholz or someone of that caliber and looking for my next GM spot, I take less spending resources in favor of an organizational philosophy that shows the ownership “gets it” and actually wants to win, over the moderately big spender who thinks free agent pitching and gritty veteranness is the way to a title.
So to me, that eliminates Seattle as a place either would want to be. Bummer for us.
…I take less spending resources in favor of an organizational philosophy that shows the ownership “gets it†and actually wants to win, over the moderately big spender who thinks free agent pitching and gritty veteranness is the way to a title.
I don’t know (maybe I’m mistaken) that the ownership groups in CLE & OAK for example are geared towards stats & analytics – I would, however, assume that they largely stay out of the baseball operations side of the business and leave that to the competent folks they hired as their respective GMs.
The ownership group really needn’t care one way or another how the baseball operations people go about their business, as long as they’re producing results. That’s what they hired them for in the first place.
16,
Oakland and Cleveland’s FOs are representative of Moneyball/Moneyball 2.0, as one of the excellent recent USSM posts pointed out.
I agree that baseball ops is more demonstrably responsible for the quality of the product on the field than is the ownership group (barring extreme examples like KC), but the analysis of personnel moves, be they trades, draft picks, signings, et cetera, still has to occur under the umbrella of overall organizational philosophy, which is set by the ownership and enforced by their appointed shill(s)–Lincoln, here.
So, is the organizational philosophy geared more towards winning championships or earning profits? Well, of course it’s a business, and an ownership group that is making lots of money despite consistently missing the playoffs has a clear opportunity to change the way it does business, if in fact missing the playoffs is something it deems unacceptable, even despite a healthy bottom line. Anything less, and by my observations I’m definitely seeing less, is proof to me that for this ownership and team leadership, the profit margin is more important that winning a championship.
I think the spread of the pro-“Moneyball 2.0” attitude among M’s fans is indicative of a feeling that the team is too blind, or too stubborn, to adapt its ways to compete with the franchises that are eclipsing us despite having inferior cash resources. And the best thing I can say is that proof of the wisdom of the informed fan movement is that no one is primarily calling for the M’s to spend more money…that’s not what it’s about at all. We want someone who will be smart with the money they DO spend. We want to see superior resources turned into a competitive advantage. Our failure to do see is what has us regarded as a ‘sleeping giant’ by so many other markets.
Oakland and Cleveland’s FOs are representative of Moneyball/Moneyball 2.0, as one of the excellent recent USSM posts pointed out.
I know nothing about the people that Beane & Shapiro ultimately report to – I’d think whoever they are would retain say over the final payroll & some power to provide input in key personnel decisions that are likely to have an impact on PR – how do you handle the guy who just got arrested, are we going to trade the guy marketing just built in to a major campaign, etc. Is that not the case?
I dunno, if I’m Antonetti or Schuerholz or someone of that caliber and looking for my next GM spot, I take less spending resources in favor of an organizational philosophy that shows the ownership “gets it†and actually wants to win, over the moderately big spender who thinks free agent pitching and gritty veteranness is the way to a title.
If you’re either of those guys, you don’t take a GM job unless you get to shape that organizational philosophy in the first place. If Lincoln were to hire one of the above, he’d have to let them run the show.
Your biggest concern is probably ownership. That’s why the Orioles job is unattractive, because the owner meddles in your business (although once again Baltimore is hearing that a new day has dawned and Andy McPhail runs the show. We shall see). That’s why I would think Seattle would be a great job to have, because they spend money and otherwise let you do your thing.
I think my pessimism comes from a firm belief that winning, and competing for championships, is the best way to run a profitable franchise…it supports pretty much every other possible objective you could have, and it’s just not as high a priority as it should be here. For a team like the M’s with great resources, you can’t let your marketing plan dominate your personnel decisions. It’s asinine and completely backwards!
If you bite the bullet, take some minor financial losses in favor of putting the best talent you can on the field day in and day out, then the culture of competitive performance evaluation and empirically driven personnel decisions will translate to wins, and the winning team makes marketing easier anyway. Next thing you know, for example, the 22 y/o outfielder you had to bench your gritty but struggling veteran for has the hottest selling jersey in your team shop.
But this all seems to be lost on M’s leadership…and that’s why we know the theme of the ’07 season is likely to be “more of the same.” My theory is that they are totally drunk on their marketing success in Japan and have erected their own glass ceiling as a result. We should be going for the jugular right now!
Meh.
Corporate CEOs who’re content to make money and not win????? Um, I don’t think so….You don’t GET to become CEOs with that kind of attitude.
Just to toss in a tidbit – Beane is actually a minority owner in the A’s, and has stated that the majority owners pretty much let him do what he wants. Cleveland’s ownership also showed a lot of poise through the rebuilding process they went through. Having ownership that allows the baseball operation to operate without interference is as important as the GM.
That’s very true: one of the funniest things about reading Moneyball was how much autonomy Beane had, where he would take a parameter like “You can add $300,000 in payroll” and use it to justify four or five trades without notifying anyone, rolling them together.
This new position held by Mr. S. certainly demeans Chuck Armstrong that much more, doesn’t it?
DMZ: If I remember correctly, he was also willing to spend his own money, out of his salary as GM, to bring in players if he felt that he needed them.
21…
Let me articulate a little. Sustainable (and exceptional, really, as we’ve seen here) profitability IS winning…it’s a business first, a game second. I’ll bet the Royals’ owner sees himself as a winner. His team sucks ass and will into perpetuity, yet he’s pocketing millions in profit every year.
I still think it holds true that the M’s organizational philosophy shows a failure to adopt a belief in how winning baseball ops game will strengthen the business more than anything else they could do. It’s a truth they can’t seem to grasp, or at least I believe that’s the case, because if it wasn’t, I reason that they’d actively be trying to do what the Indians have done, rather than pissing into a hurricane with their season ticket holders standing downwind.
I agree with your point, I just think they really are deluded into thinking they have a winning philosophy and are building a future champion. The reality is that they are not, and therefore are what I would consider “drunk” on their financial success. They honestly don’t think they need to radically change their philosophy in order to compete commensurate with their financial resources, and it’s a sad state of affairs for M’s fans in the know.
re 26
Yeah, we don’t disagree at all. They’re more deluded than they are Machievalian (emphasizing profits over winning and all)–it’s just that all the big time CEOs I’ve known and studied, absolutely none of them could tolerate being profitable, but not winning. Too much testesterone for that to happen.
And I think there’s enough male hormones running in the front office for them to be stubborn about it, and not admit that there are better ways than theirs to win–sure, they got over .500 this year, but so did Cleveland…and they did it more cheaply AND more profitably.