AJC columnist Jeff Schultz had an extended interview Thursday with Braves chairman and CEO Terry McGuirk.
Q: Thanks for your time. I’ve made it a point to try to talk to local owners but you’re as close as I can get with the Braves.
A: I'm the proxy.
Q: Where do you see the Braves right now in terms of where they are and where they should be?
A: We're on a linear trend upward. It's sort of hard to know how far to go back or how far to go ahead, but my goal is to improve every year. I want to spend more money on the team every year. I want to improve everything we do. Whether it looks like it or not, we evaluate everything we do in the offseason every year. We have hundreds of hours of meetings. What did we do wrong? How can we do it better? It's a dedication organization that lives and dies with every loss.
Q: Some people may not realize you’ve been around the organization for a while and regularly attend games.
A: I've been with the organization since 1976. I'd like to see if anybody has been to more baseball games in Atlanta than me since 1976. I've been to over 2,000 games. Probably since the 2000s, I've averaged 70 home games a year and 100 total, including spring training and road games. Even when we bought the team, I worked in the stadium because I was in my 20s and I had nothing else to do.
Q: What did you do in those early days?
A: I've told this story a few times. We bought the team in winter of 1975 and in the spring of 1976, Ted Turner and Eddie Robinson walk into my office and said: "Ted doesn't really know baseball, he doesn't know the rules really, so since you played college sports you're going to go to spring training as a non-roster left fielder and you're leaving tomorrow morning." Bill Acree handed me my stack of stuff, with the stirrups, and I didn't even know how to put it all on. I went out and for three weeks I pretended to be a non-roster left fielder and every night I'd go back and have dinner with Ted, and he'd ask questions. Dave Bristol was in his first year as manager, and he almost had a heart attack that we were doing this. The players had no idea. In baseball if you're a non-roster invitee nobody wants to know you because you're going to be cut. So it was real easy to hide. Then at the end of three weeks, I took the whole team out to dinner.
Q: So it was like, “Undercover Boss.”
A: It was "Undercover Walter Mitty."
Q: What led to you becoming an executive with the Braves?
A: I was CEO of Turner Broadcasting and, when I retired, I was about to head out of the company when the Time Warner guys said: "Why don't you get involved in our sports? We need somebody there.' The winter teams (Hawks and Thrashers) were a financial disaster for us. Eventually, one left town and the other hasn't gotten a heck of a lot better. And our baseball team in 2003 lost almost $40 million. Real cash. It was scary. There was no reason in the world it should be losing that kind of money. That's when I stepped in day-to-day. (Note: The Braves had a payroll of over $103 million in 2003 but it was cut to $90 million in 2004 and $86 million in 2005.)
Q: You said the team is on an upward trend. Does that mean you’re satisfied with where they’re at?
A: Baseball is always going to be fits and starts. When I say linear, I think we apply a linear pressure upwards, but the results aren't linear. This is a choppy team. It's hard to understand. I thought I'd understand this team better in spring training than I do today. With six weeks to go, we're still mildly in the hunt for everything. But I'm not comfortable with how far we've fallen behind the Nationals.
Q: Why do you think they’ve been inconsistent?
A: In the spring, when we signed five or six young players to $280 million in contracts, we secured the nucleus of the team that we wanted to carry forward. I think sometimes we forget that we're one of the youngest teams in baseball. They're still learning the craft. They don't really know everything they need to know to be stars. We've lost some stars over the last couple of years in Chipper (Jones) and (Tim) Hudson and (Brian) McCann. Those guys provided a lot of stability in the clubhouse. We've had other guys who weren't stars but led. But we looked at this team as needing to originate with our youth.
Q: You’ve used words like choppy and uncomfortable. Did you have a higher expectation level and, if so, are you disappointed now?
A: I had a high expectation. I wouldn't say I'm disappointed. The up-and-down performance was different than what I expected. But as I look back now — maybe not, given our youth. We bring up Tommy La Stella up, Dan Uggla goes out, now (Phil) Gosselin is here. You can see the change.
Q: There has been a perception that you have an ownership group that basically looks at a spreadsheet and that maybe there’s not enough accountability or a high enough bar that’s been set. The suggestion is that nobody is being held to a high enough standard. Can you respond?
A: I don't agree. We hold ourselves to a high standard. We're our own worst critics.
Q: So let me come back to: What should the expectation level be? What if you don’t make the playoffs, or you make it but get bounced early again?
A: Those are fair things to ask. It's fair to question accountability if we don't perform. Sometimes you have to ask: What are your capabilities in a mid-market opportunity in baseball's economic system? Baseball is getting further away from having economic parity. But our goal is championships. Most everybody who was there in '95 from a management standpoint is here now. We know what it takes. We had the best team in baseball probably in '96 and we should've won. But it takes a lot of special things coming together.
Q: In your mind, are jobs on the line if you don’t reach a certain level?
A: I don't want to put absolutes on anything. With six weeks to go in the middle of the hunt, I wouldn't say anything that would upset the direction and the performance of the team. Teams have a psyche and organizations have a direction and we're totally focused right now on trying to make the playoffs. I don't even want to say what we'll do if we don't make it. We're evaluating in either case and we deserve to be judged on our evaluations. That's not just my view. I turn to people like John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox to make decisions on some of these things.
Q: You talked about the economics of the game. But we also see Kansas City and Oakland succeeding with lower payrolls. So doesn’t it really come down to not how much you spend but the decisions that you make? The team made two expensive mistakes with Dan Uggla and, at least so far, B.J. Upton.
A: B.J. would tell you he's disappointed. I love that he hasn't given up and he wants to fix it. He still thinks he can help us win and so do I. But the time for evaluation on this stuff isn't now. It has to be in the offseason and all I can tell you is we don't go on vacation when the season's over.
Q: How much do financial mistakes hurt?
A: You can make a mistake. You just can't make a lot of mistakes. Small-market teams can makes very few mistakes. The big guys like the Red Sox, the Dodgers, the Angels, the Yankees, they can afford to make big mistakes. We don't have that luxury. Uggla was one of my favorite guys on the team. It just killed me that whatever happened, but it just didn't work anymore. We took that hit.
Q: When you get to the evaluation process, how do you balance personnel decisions by general manager Frank Wren with on-field decisions by manager Fredi Gonzalez? Will that be a difficult process?
A: Everybody is accountable. You just mentioned two guys who are accountable. I'm holding myself accountable. We have a lot of resources to make good judgments. Sometimes it seems like if there's not some newsworthy precipitous change that nothing's happening, but we talk every single day about the organization. I don't want to make any predictions. I don't want to say even how or when meetings will occur. But if we don't have success, know that we won't be satisfied and we'll be looking at things very hard. Now I don't want to paint to dire of a picture. We had a car wreck of a situation in spring training with loss of (pitchers Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy) and Frank pivoted and was able to find Aaron Harang and Ervin Santana.
Q: If you took all of Wren’s moves and you divided them in two categories, good and bad, the good would outweigh the bad. He’s found guys like Harang, made good mid-level trades and knows when to bring up prospects. The bad category isn’t nearly as deep but would you agree there’s heavy stuff that affects everything?
A: You've written extensively on it. I've read every word and it rings true because the empirical evidence is in the performance. All I can tell you is there is no lack of accountability and evaluation. I just have to ask you to trust us. I've been successful in everything I've done in life and I'm not going to go down without a hell of a fight.
