The farther John Schuerholz climbs the Atlanta Braves’ executive ladder the worse the Braves seem to get. Appearances, Schuerholz says, are deceiving.
Schuerholz was recently named vice chairman of the Braves, a promotion for the 75-year-old whose first job was teaching world geography, grammar, spelling, composition and literature to junior high school students.
Not many men – or women – have risen from eighth-grade teacher to vice chairman of a major company in a major industry, but Schuerholz has done it and has set the standard for the dozen general managers who are in their first seasons in their jobs.
Who among them will build an organization that will win 14 consecutive division championships, five National League pennants and a World Series, and that was after winning a World Series in the American League and before he schooled an assistant to go to his old team and win a World Series there?
Who among them will be promoted to the role of club president and eight years later to vice chairman? If it were not for the fact that it has been Terry McGuirk, the chairman, who has been promoting Schuerholz, I’d caution McGuirk to look over his shoulder and see if Schuerholz were coming for his job.
But as I said, as Schuerholz rises, the Braves seem to fall.
The Braves won only one division title in Schuerholz’s eight seasons as president and last year won only 67 games, their lowest total since 1990, the season before Schuerholz arrived.
“That’s just a coincidence,” Schuerholz said of the declining record, “because I’ve been in on all our plans.”
In a telephone interview last week, Schuerholz talked enthusiastically about the Braves’ strategic planning.
“Our plan was a seminal moment in this organization,” he said. “We had to decide to go one of two ways: Rebuild this organization to what it used to be or stay with what we had done. We all agreed. We would take the courageous, bold path of restoring the baseball organization.”
As president and now vice chairman, Schuerholz has worked on baseball matters with John Hart, a long-time friend on whom he prevailed to become president of baseball operations a year and a half ago, and John Coppolella, who was named general manager last year.
Hart, 67, is a veteran baseball executive, having served long terms as general manager of Cleveland and Texas. Coppolella, 37, a magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame, fits with the current prominence of analytics in Major League Baseball.
“He is by nature an analytical thinker and embraces it,” Schuerholz said.
At the same time the Braves announced Schuerholz’s new title, the Braves promoted two other executives, naming Mike Plant and Derek Schiller presidents, Plant as president of development, Schiller as president of business.
Commenting on his role, Schuerholz said, “Actually, it’s only a new title. I’m already in the corner office. It used to be they kicked you upstairs. I’ll be advising and consulting not only those two new presidents but also Hart and Coppolella. Principally I’ll go back to baseball. I’ll be focusing my time on advice and consulting on the baseball side. McGuirk has advised me he wants me to be involved with everything I’ve been involved with.”
Schuerholz’s team-building credentials are beyond question. When he became general manager for the 1991 season, the Braves had endured three straight last-place division finishes. With him leading the way, they went on their string of 14 consecutive division titles. He was especially adept at replacing important players with players who became even more important.
Now, of course, he oversees that kind of work rather than doing it hands-on. Addressing the work the Braves have done recently, shedding veterans for younger talent, he said, “We needed to do it and do it right and they have done it right.
“As my title changed and I got away from baseball, I brought in Hart and promoted Coppolella and together they have done this remarkable job to put us back on the right track. You know it will take time to mature so we can attain the success and excellence as we did when Bobby Cox and I were responsible. We see great evidence that it’s happening.
“We went from the lowest ranked farm system in baseball to one of the top two. We have to replenish our talent, and Hart and Coppolella have done that. They have made remarkable trades, acquiring players who are great prospects.”
Prospects, though, often turn out to be suspects so the Braves will have to wait to see how good those trades really were. This past off-season the Braves traded shortstop Andrelton Simmons, outfielder Cameron Maybin and pitcher Shelby Miller and received a major league shortstop, Erick Aybar; Arizona’s starting center fielder, Ender Inciarte, and prospects Sean Newcomb, Aaron Blair, Chris Ellis, Ian Krol, Gabe Speier and Aaron Blair (pitchers) and shortstop Dansby Swanson.
For the good of the Braves’ future, the team of Hart and Coppolella will have to do better than Frank Wren, who succeeded Schuerholz as general manager in 2007 but was fired in 2014. The Braves’ failure under Wren may be one of the factors that has
kept Schuerholz working. Has he considered retiring?
“I talked about it,” he said. “My friends and golfing buddies all retired. I realized I can’t do it. I have the passion and the energy to do it. I enjoy this. I’m energized being around this environment. I love what I do.”
WHO ARE THESE GUYS?
Last Friday night was a remarkable night in Major League Baseball. The games produced a series of feats by players many fans would be hard pressed to identify. Try it with these names:
- Ross Stripling
- Trevor Story
- Jeremy Hazelbaker
- Aledmys Diaz
- Greg Garcia
You can find out what they did at the end of the column.
MLB NEEDS A RULE TO RULE BY
Major League Baseball is so busy making up rules that force players to play the game less aggressively – make that more timidly, if you prefer – that it ignores rules that should be changed. One of those was highlighted in a season-opening game between the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros.
After hitting a dribbler along the first base line, Houston’s Carlos Correa ran all the way to first inside the base line and not in the path outside the line halfway to first. In trying to get the ball to first baseman Mark Teixeira, the pitcher, Dellin Betances, tossed it high over Correa’s head. It also sailed over Teixeira’s head, rolling into right field and allowing Jose Altuve to score.
The Yankees’ manager, Joe Girardi, furiously argued that by running inside the base line Correa interfered with and prevented the Yankees from getting him out.
The umpires disagreed. They ruled that Correa didn’t interfere with Teixeira’s ability to catch the throw, which the rule requires for interference to be called. The ruling was similar to a pass play in the National Football League on which a defensive back holds a receiver but the official doesn’t call pass interference because the pass sailed well out of bounds and the receiver had no chance to catch it.
In the Betances-Teixeira play, Teixeira had no chance to catch the ball; the umpires were right about that. But he had no chance to catch it because Correa’s improper presence inside the base line forced Betances to throw the ball high. What was Betances to do?
Hit Correa in the back, umpire Dana DeMuth told Girardi. Then he could have been called out for interference. I have a better idea – hit him in the head and then MLB will say that could result in injury for the runner so we have to change rule.
DeMuth and his crew might have been right technically, but Correa’s path violated the spirit of the rule and he should have been called out with no run scoring. I’m guessing there’s a player out there who is nasty enough to hit a runner in the head – or the neck, which is not protected by a batting helmet – and force MLB to change the rule.
CHICAGO CUBS AND PREMATURE PREDICTIONS
The Chicago Cubs didn’t have to go very far into the season to demonstrate the foolishness of pre-season predictions. In the Cubs’ third game of the season, two of their outfielders collided when chasing after a fly ball and one of them will play no more this season.
Left fielder Kyle Schwarber tore two ligaments in his left leg and is out for the season.
The Cubs were not counting on Schwarber as heavily as they are on Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, but he hits home runs and drives in runs, all of which would be critical in the Cubs’ quest for the franchise’s first World Series championship since 1908.
Had it been known last month that Schwarber would not play this season, would the Cubs have been everyone’s favorite to go to and win the World Series? Very likely yes, but 25 weeks remain in the season. There’s a lot more time for more injuries.
The Cubs aren’t the only contender with injury problems. The Los Angeles Dodgers placed left fielder Carl Crawford on the disabled list Saturday, making him the 11th Dodgers player to go on the list this year.
His outfield teammate, Andre Ethier, was already there, recuperating from a fractured tibia that is expected to force him to miss 10 to 14 weeks.
With his $18 million salary this season, Ethier is one of the reasons a Yahoo! Sports business writer is so enraged about the Dodgers’ payroll.
The Dodgers are paying $114 million in salaries for players who aren’t playing for them and it shows the real problem with MLB payrolls
That was the headline, and it made me if not laugh, chuckle. I don’t know where the writer has been, but major league payrolls have long – for decades – been inflated by salaries of players on the disabled list and other factors. Including such salaries and one club’s payment to another club agreed to in a trade and payments to released players is the only way to get an accurate picture of what players are costing teams.
After breaking down the various elements of the Dodgers’ payroll, the article says, “All of this illustrates the true advantage that large-revenue teams have over the rest of baseball. That is, it is not the talent on the field, but the ability to eschew unwanted players and to replace injured players.”
This is not breaking news. All of this has been known and written for at least three decades. Only the numbers have changed. How many times have I written that other teams hate the Yankees not only because of their sizeable payrolls but also perhaps moreso because they can pay to replace injured players.
Another problem I have with this Yahoo! Article is its inaccuracy. It says the Dodgers’ opening day payroll was $253 million. The Associated Press put it at $234 million. Not much difference at that level, but enough to make one trustworthy and one not.
The AP payrolls, which have been compiled for years by Ron Blum, are the only ones I trust. That stems from the years when I was compiling MLB payrolls for The New York Times. The figures that Blum and I came up with weren’t exactly the same, but they were close enough. USA Today was the only other publication doing the same thing at the time, but its figures had too many flaws to accept them as accurate.
I stopped tracking team payrolls when the Times sports editor no longer wanted to publish all players’ salaries, feeling they took up too much space.
AND THEY DID WHAT?
In his major league debut, Ross Stripling had a no-hitter for 7 1/3 innings, but the Dodgers’ manager, Dave Roberts, took him out of the game to avoid possible injury. Stripling, a 26-year-old right-hander, had thrown 100 pitches, and the outing marked the end of his recuperation from 2014 Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery.
In his fourth major league game, Trevor Story, Colorado’s shortstop in place of Jose Reyes, hit two home runs, giving him six for his brief career. (His start-of-career streak ended when he failed to hit a homer Saturday night.)
Jeremy Hazelbaker, Aledmys Diaz and Greg Garcia each hit a pinch-hit home run for St. Louis.