Braves hire Alex Anthopolous

Cassano

Registered User
Aug 31, 2013
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What mess exactly? The team went on to make back-to-back ALCS' after not making the playoffs the previous 22 years.... pretty much every player was acquired by him minus EE/Bautista.



Reyes had struggled and it looked like he was about to fall off a cliff and they were offered someone who at the time was arguably the best SS in baseball, Hoffman was just a prospect who could have easily flopped so it was a no brainer.
Yes, but Tulo has been horrendous for the Blue Jays since.
 

Voight

#winning
Feb 8, 2012
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He wanted out because he was a baby who didn’t want a new boss. It was essentially going to be the same deal as Beaston/aa

.... um no it wasn't. Under Beeston, he had final say on all baseball decisions, with Shapiro he would have lost that power. & at that point he had more than earned it.

John Hart basically got axed (got a golf course type position).

Its literally the same position he had when Copollela was GM.

The Shapiro and Atkins that have their finger prints all over the current Indians right? The hilarious thing about the way AA is thought of in Toronto is that 6 months before he left people were talking about firing him....if he was still here today...people would be ready to fire him. The one thing he did really well was plan his exit perfectly.

Shapiro was not the right hire for the job. He has a small market mentality in a big-market. Kenny Williams or Dan Duquette would have been much better hires.

Its not untrue that people wanted to fire him in July of 2015.... but then he did the smart thing. He made two huge/bold trades to significantly upgrade his roster and push his team to the playoffs.
 

Voight

#winning
Feb 8, 2012
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He literally doesn't.

John Hart will transition away from his role as president of baseball operations and into a senior adviser role alongside Hall of Famers Bobby Cox and John Schuerholz.

Braves to name Alex Anthopoulos as next general manager

This is basically getting paid to show up a day or two a month.

The report I read said he would still be prez of baseball ops.

Anyhow, makes sense. He needed to watch over Copollela as he was a rookie GM, AA can handle himself. Plus Hart is pretty much at retirement age.
 

GIN ANTONIC

Registered User
Aug 19, 2007
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I'm not sure exactly what was reported on paper but that is essentially what the issue was. Beeston handled the business side of things and as long as it was within their budget/reason AA could go out and do what he wanted. Which as you can see is what he did. Shaprio gets to make all the final decisions now, if not make the moves from the beginning now. That's why he brought in Atkins to be his puppet. Everyone knows it's Shapiro pulling the strings, no one actually considers Atkins to be the GM.

I don't think you'll find anyone to say that AA had a flawless record as a GM for the Jays but he at least had the balls to make big moves and some of them turned out great. Even the ones that didn't pan out exactly perfect were moves that in theory should have worked better than they did and at the time were the right things to do. The only real bad one from the start was Syn for Dickey. Not because of what Syn turned out to be (because no one really knew what he'd be at that time), but because everyone should have known that Dickey wasn't going to be a repeat CY candidate. But yes, obviously Syn turning into a legit ace type pitcher makes it much worse in hindsight.
 
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Voight

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Alex Anthopoulos explanation lies in what Toronto Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro didn’t say

Shapiro, 48, was asked the question that has driven the narrative since the GM turned down a contract extension last week: would Anthopoulos have been given automony over baseball decisions?

“I don’t know that,” Shapiro said. He said what was more important than who had what authority was a process that allowed the organization to arrive at the best decision. “It’s not about autonomy, it’s about collective success.”
Later, he was asked how involved he planned to be in the baseball operations of the club. “That’s a tough question to answer,” Shapiro said. In a good organization, a good culture, he explained, the president is “going to have some involvement.”

He (Beeston) wasn’t about to opine on the merits of process and the importance of corporate symbiosis. And he let Anthopoulos do his job.
Shapiro, it seems fair to say now, would have done so, too, but only to a point. He would have retained final say on player-movement decisions because he’s a guy who, to use another bit if business jargon, doesn’t believe in silos.

And so Anthopoulos, having just completed his masterstroke 2015 season, must have realized that the result of that success would be a job in which his authority would be diminished. Not dramatically, perhaps, but diminished nonetheless. Shapiro might say, as he did Monday, that he didn’t understand all the fuss about autonomy, but the man who would have been his GM evidently did.

Report: Blue Jays GM Anthopoulos, incoming CEO Shapiro butted heads

Since 2009, Anthopolous has enjoyed autonomy over the Blue Jays roster, making several impactful trades.
Article continues below ...
In 2015 alone, he acquired Josh Donaldson in a trade with the Oakland Athletics, giving up Brett Lawrie, Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin and prospect Franklin Barreto. At the trade deadline, he traded top pitching prospects Daniel Norris and Matt Boyd as key pieces to acquire David Price. In a separate trade, he swapped 2014 first-rounder Jeff Hoffman, flame-thrower Miguel Castro, prospect Jesus Tinoco and shortstop Jose Reyes for Troy Tulowitzki.
While Anthopoulos was praised for these moves — all while working within the team’s allotted payroll — incoming president and CEO Shapiro reportedly scolded him in their first and only meeting for trading so many prospects in one season:

To say Alex Anthopoulos rejected an extension from Blue Jays is ridiculous: Griffin | Toronto Star

To say Anthopoulos rejected an extension is ridiculous. The new offer from ownership and incoming president Mark Shapiro would take away the final say on player personnel moves, handing them to the new guy who had discovered in his role as a business-only Indians president, that he missed his role as a trade/free-agent power broker like an alcoholic misses Jaeger bombs. The insulting responsibility offer to Anthopoulos was akin to the man who built a business being asked to come back as an executive assistant. Loyalty with the Blue Jays is not a two-way street, it's a cul-de-sac.

Making sense of Alex Anthopoulos' departure from Blue Jays

1. Ownership wanted somebody it could talk to.
2. Anthopolous wasn’t really their cup of tea.
3. Mark Shapiro, incoming team president, wasn’t a big fan of Anthopolous’ big in-season moves.
5. When hired, Shapiro was assured he would have final authority over big moves.
(and finally)
6. Anthopolous, having just put together and overseen the best team in the American League, simply wasn’t willing to run all his personnel decisions through Shapiro. Even with a five-year contract on the table that included an escape clause if Anthopolous wasn’t happy with his new boss.
 

AtlantaWhaler

Thrash/Preds/Sabres
Jul 3, 2009
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This won't show the effects for a few years. The Braves have the next few waves of prospects all set. It'll show in about 4-5 years when the current stock of picks and prospects will be ready. Yeah, they lost some 18 and 19 year olds, but luckily, they are stocked for years. Losing Maitan is a kick in the shorts, but he's 17.

To me, the real penalty is the lack of money to sign any international players for the next 3 years. He'll have to be real creative to keep the pipeline stocked after the 5-year mark.
 

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