Hart knew many Braves fans wouldn’t like Kimbrel trade

When you trade arguably your team’s most popular player on the eve of opening day, after trading away a majority of its other most popular players during the winter, well, you can expect plenty of fan backlash. Especially when you’ve said multiple times in recent months that you had no intention of trading said player.

The Braves knew this when they traded Craig Kimbrel on Sunday. Oh, they knew it. Which is why Braves president of baseball operations John Hart was ready when a reporter asked him what he’d say to fans about trading the flamethrowing closer so close to opening day. What follows is the uninterrupted reply from Hart, a longtime former Indians and Rangers GM, to that one question:

“Look, he’s a fan favorite, as he should be,” Hart begain. “If I had a son or a daughter – I’ve got grandchildren, and his poster’s hanging on the wall. He’s that kind of a guy. He’s a guy you want to look at. So yeah, did I think about that as I went through this? Absolutely. I mean, I’m a human being. I look at it and go, here’s a popular player, fan favorite, star quality player. It wasn’t something that I relished doing. I certainly understand the fans’ side of this piece, there’s no question. They’re Atlanta Braves fans, as well (as Kimbrel fans). This is a club that we don’t want to see just sort of sink into the morass here for a period of time. We think we’re doing some exciting things, so many good things going on behind the scenes. You leave spring training and look at what we’re doing in the minor leagues and the enthusiasm and the talent level that’s coming. We look up at the June draft and we’ve got five of the first 75 picks this year within this draft, and obviously we’ve made some changes within that scouting staff and we feel this is going to be a home-run draft for us. We’ve got the international piece — July 2 (international) signings are coming, we’re very excited about what we’re going to do down there. And I think at the end, it’s about the Braves.

“Believe me, the fans love players; I love players. I understand. It’s a hard thing. Believe me, this wasn’t something that anybody in this organization had any disregard for fans. This was a huge part of the discussion as we went through it. Look, we understand the popularity within the community, we understand what an outstanding young man he is. How do we define that? Again, all of us have personal feelings, but when you look at what is best professionally and you get from everybody within the organization that it’s the right thing to do and it’s going to give us a chance to get better, you make that call. And that’s what we’ve done here.

“Again, because of the character and the quality of the young man — and I’ve made thousands of trades in my life, some of them have worked and some haven’t — but when you deal – and I’ve done it before, I’ve dealt players that I’ve had close relationships with, or guys that have been exceptionally popular within the community, and it’s a hard thing to do — so trust me, I understand. I understand completely the fans’ piece of it. I know that there’s going to be a lot of unhappy fans because of it. But my hope is they’ll take a look at all the things that we have going on, where we were, and ultimately where we think we can get to, and sometimes you’ve got to make these tough calls to do that.”

Hart was also asked how Kimbrel had taken the news when he called the player to tell him he’d been traded.

“He was just a consummate professional,” Hart said. “This is a guy, you want him to be your son, you want him to marry your daughter. He’s just an outstanding young man. He was very respectful of the opportunity to play for the Braves, he love loves the Braves. He understands the dynamic. He was just absolutely professional and classy, everything that you’d expect Craig Kimbrel would be, he was on the call. There was no bitterness, he was very grateful and appreciative of the opportunity….