If the 15-month upgrade of the Braves’ minor league system was the equivalent of going from a low-end compact to a luxury sports car, director of player development Dave Trembley and assistant director Jonathan Schuerholz were the guys handed the keys to the Ferrari.
They are coordinating the program, in charge of turning a stockpile of prospects that are rated the best in baseball by at least one expert into a steady stream of players ready to help the Braves become a contender again at the major league level.
Given all that is riding on the outcome, one might assume there’s pressure in their positions. But Trembley, a relentlessly upbeat sort who has spent some 30 years in professional baseball, relishes the opportunity to play a big part in the rebuild.
“I don’t see it as pressure,” said Trembley, a former Baltimore Orioles manager and Braves minor league field coordinator, who returned to Atlanta in October 2014 after two seasons on Houston’s major league coaching staff.
“The Atlanta Braves have been very good for a long time. What we try to do is come in and get this thing back on track where it was,” Trembley said. “We’ve got great people in player development and scouting, then we’ve got very good teachers, we’ve got people that care. I think the expectations bar has been raised, no doubt. The ball’s in our court.
“We have a very big responsibility to make sure these (players) turn out in a way that we all feel they should. And if they do, they deserve all the credit in the world.”
And if they don’t?
“If they don’t, we have to be responsible for it,” Trembley said. “I know that. I think all of us know that.”
He smiled and added, “But it’s still fun.”
His enthusiasm, experience and accountability were reasons that Trembley was the guy they hired right after the new front-office regime took over — president of baseball operations John Hart and his assistant John Coppolella, who’d be promoted to general manager — within a year.
They hired Trembley and promoted Schuerholz, then 34, a former minor league player, minor league manager and son of Braves president John Schuerholz.
Like his dad, the younger Schuerholz has a knack for saying the right things and spreading the credit.
“Players make this game,” Schuerholz said. “Players make championship caliber clubs. That’s all these (prospect) rankings show us, is that we have players. Now it’s our job in player development to grow, to help this talent flourish not just into major league players, but championship-caliber players.
“That’s what Atlanta has done for so long, is have major league championship-caliber players come up who could help — back then it was Bobby (Cox), now it’s Fredi (Gonzalez) — supplement their club. They need a piece here, they need a guy to steal a base? All right, it’s this guy. They need a guy when an injury happens, this guy’s ready to go. We’ve got guys who are going to be there, in that wave of players, ready to play.”
Coppolella and Hart pulled off a flurry of trades and draft picks that in a span of 15 months transformed a minor league system that most ranked in the bottom five in baseball into a consensus top-three system.
They have at least eight players in their system currently rated among baseball’s top 100 prospects by various publications, including three — shortstops Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies, pitcher Sean Newcomb — who’ve been rated in the top 30 in one or more lists. Many of the top prospects not on the 40-man roster were invited to major league spring training, including Albies, who only turned 19 in January.
“I think that speeds up their development,” Trembley said. “I want Albies with these guys. … And I think it shows that we’ll make a commitment to them. We’ll make a commitment to them and we expect they’ll make a commitment back to us. I think the big thing with a lot of players is they have to know what the expectations are. A lot of times nobody tells them what’s expected. We told these guys what the expectations are. We told them, we’re counting on you.”
Trembley is refreshing in that he doesn’t try to downplay expectations or temper the excitement about the Braves’ many elite prospects.
“What we have is legitimate major league players,” he said. “That’s what we have. I don’t think we need to sell it or sugarcoat it. We can be really honest about it. I think what it does, too, it puts notice to all the other guys — there’s competition. Positions are going to have to be earned and I think the message that Coppy and John Hart have given to all our players is, don’t sell yourself short and think you’ve got to spend an awful lot of time in the minor leagues.
“We’re going to push people and push them in a positive way and find out how quickly they can help us at the major league level. I think in some ways, that’s not always the way it is (in baseball). But we don’t necessarily have to go step by step (at each level in the minor leagues) with a lot of these guys that we think can help us in the big leagues rather soon.”
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