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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2009 > January > 13
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Wren proves he knows the game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So how do you like your blue-eyed general manager now, Braves fans? Still think he’s incompetent? That he has wrecked the organization? That he should be tarred and feathered and fired forthwith?
The man who lost John Smoltz has just landed two starting pitchers healthier than John Smoltz. The man who supposedly doesn’t know a catcher’s mitt from a capacitor suddenly has a rotation that would seem a match for any in the NL East. Derek Lowe and Kenshin Kawakami and Javier Vazquez and Jair Jurrjens and Jorge Campillo or maybe Tommy Hanson — any reason to believe that bunch won’t sit up and work?
Frank Wren said he wanted to land two starting pitchers this offseason. In Lowe and Kawakami and Vazquez, he has imported three. Maybe none of them is quite as good as Jake Peavy, but none of them comes at the cost in prospects Peavy would have commanded. Wren has managed to rebuild a broken rotation without bankrupting the farm system, and that’s good news for 2009 and better news for 2011.
“He’s done as good as you can do,” said Bobby Cox, once a GM himself, speaking of Wren. “When you play the free-agent game, it’s tough. You might have six or seven teams after somebody, but only one gets the guy.”
Cox spoke after the official introduction of Kawakami at Turner Field on Tuesday. For legal reasons, the Braves couldn’t yet comment on Lowe, whose formal arrival could well come Wednesday. And still Cox, when asked if the Braves are better than they were on Oct. 1, said: “Oh, absolutely. It’s not even close.”
Said Wren: “I think we’re better off by a pretty good margin.”
Yes, they could still use another bat in the outfield, but there’s still a month before pitchers and catchers report. And even if Gregor Blanco is the Opening Day center fielder, the Braves have still upgraded significantly in the place that matters most. You can’t win if you don’t have starting pitcher. Once again, the Braves have it.
Earlier Tuesday, Smoltz had met the Boston media and had donned Red Sox regalia for the cameras, and at the 755 Club Kawakami faced the media from a dais not 10 feet from a framed picture of No. 29. Yes, the memory will linger. But, as Cox said, “The game moves on, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
Smoltz or no Smoltz, the Braves now have reason to believe each of their starting pitchers will be healthy enough to take his assigned turn, which is in happy contrast to last season, when Mike Hampton didn’t pitch until July and Tim Hudson didn’t pitch after July and the Hall of Famers Smoltz and Tom Glavine worked four innings between them after June 10.
The 2009 Braves might or might not be good enough to overhaul the Phillies and Mets — those club are pretty good, and one of them is the reigning World Series champion — but the combination of Kawakami and Lowe again puts the Braves in any conversation. Said Cox: “I think we’re going to be competitive again.”
Three months ago the Braves seemed stuck between bad options: They could stand pat and lose big for the next couple of seasons, or they could bankrupt their farm system in the attempt to get better faster. Wren, to his credit, found a third way. Yes, he was outbid for Smoltz, but in the final analysis Wren has had a winning winter.
He addressed needs and bettered his team. Maybe this wasn’t the way John Schuerholz would have done it, and maybe it wasn’t the most seamless — a favorite Schuerholz word — of processes, but you can’t argue with the result. The Braves are players again, and their blue-eyed GM just proved he knows how to play.
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