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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2009 > January > 16
Friday, January 16, 2009
Braves quickly rebound as Wren spends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Remember the Braves? The cheapskates who wouldn’t even look at a big-ticket free agent? The jaded organization that wasn’t willing to renew its commitment to winning?
Anybody seen those Braves in … oh, the past four days?
Didn’t think so.
This team might or might not win the 2009 World Series, but the old labels no longer adhere. The Braves just spent big on a free agent represented by the demon agent Scott Boras, and if that’s not a tectonic shift you need to brush up on tectonics.
“I don’t think it’s anything earth-shattering,” said Frank Wren, the general manager who gained 110 I.Q. points in the span of 96 hours. “We’ve had conversations [with Boras] all along. Things just haven’t materialized.”
But this time they did, and that’s a major thing. We’d come to regard the Braves as an indifferently motivated operation overseen by distant and corporate ownership, as an operation so devoid of new ideas it had been reduced to recycling ex-Braves. Yet here this organization was Friday morning, introducing its second starting pitcher of an overstuffed week and looking spiffier than it has this millennium.
“It’s not just for this year,” said Derek Lowe, the newest new pitcher and a Boras client. “It shows this organization is willing to make a huge commitment to players so it can get back to winning. It can open doors for years to come. You have to get the ball rolling in the right direction.”
Not since Brian Jordan in 1998 had the Braves signed a significant free agent. (Last winter’s re-acquisition of Tom Glavine fell under the heading of recycling.) Not since 1990 had the Braves required so much work in one offseason, and in the end the locally pilloried Wren has accomplished everything save finding one more bat.
On Sept. 29, Wren had said the Braves as then constituted “would finish somewhere in the middle of the pack.” Here’s what he said Friday: “I know we’ll be in the mix [for the NL East title].”
Said Lowe: “The division is very competitive, but we feel we have a right to win it.”
Recent years have seen the highest-priced talent take only outbound flights — Glavine and Maddux and Millwood and Sheffield and Furcal and Drew and A. Jones and Teixeira and finally Smoltz. The once-proud Braves had been reduced to clipping coupons. But they’ve made an outlay of $83 million ($60 mil for Lowe, $23 mil for Kenshin Kawakami) that arrives as a bracing slap upside the head. These guys can spend money after all!
“There are still players we can’t go after because of our market size and our payroll,” Wren said, “but when you can line up your starting rotation, it does change things. You know you’re going to have a chance to win, and that makes a huge difference with the players and a huge difference with fans.”
A week ago, Wren was seen as the maladroit who let John Smoltz walk away. Said Wren on Friday, claiming no vindication: “Over the last 10 days the offseason really turned around. It’s been very fruitful. Our players are excited about going to spring training, and I’m not sure that was true 10 days ago.”
We will never again see a run of 14 division titles, but current events indicate that we won’t soon see the Braves fail as completely as they did last summer. Last season’s rotation was based largely on hope and memory. The 2009 version is made of more tangible stuff.
Last season always seemed a last stand, and when it all collapsed it appeared the Braves were years from rising again. By spending handsomely and wisely, Wren has given lie to that and other dire notions. He has, as the Brits say, done the business.
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