The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
LEADING UP TO THE GAME:
Noon: Players and coaches will parade down Battery Walk and into the park prior to batting practice.
2 p.m.: Stadium gates open. 3:20 p.m.: Braves alumni and entertainment teams lead fans in pep rally (the first 40,000 fans will receive a “Chop On” tomahawk).
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I’m trying to figure out, here at first bloom of another Braves season, how this modest bunch can go all Loyola-Chicago on baseball.
A trade with the Cubs for Sister Jean could be a start. (I’m just assuming she’s an old-school, National League nun).
Otherwise, more practically, it is going to take some combination of the unforeseen to break through this season. Because just about everyone looking at this team from a studious distance seems to believe it hasn’t quite finished baking yet. If the Braves are going to exceed expectations this year, first baseman Freddie Freeman will have to play a big part.
Five needs for the Braves, if they are to surprise anyone (and, please, feel free to add any Dansby Swanson reference or subtract others as you see fit):
1. Lightning on a clear night.
The Braves have lacked the conviction of the home run — last year fin-
Hummer
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Green, who was10-under par.
and special assistant Gordon Blakely, the Butch and Sundance of the Dominican Republic baseball signing underworld, were forced to resign.
McGuirk declined to speak a word about it until Tuesday. He declined interviews through October and into November, citing MLB’s investigation. When the investigation ended in November and Coppolella was banned for life and president of baseball operations John Hart was allowed to quietly tiptoe out the backdoor without public condemnation, McGuirk continued his no-speak stance (beyond a brief printed statement).
Fast forward to spring training. McGuirk and I chatted about his decision not to chat. He initially declined an on-the-record interview. I suggested the possibility of him doing a sort of state-of-the-Braves interview before the season. That morphed into Tuesday, when I sat in a team board room with Tim Tucker and David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and McGuirk, Anthopoulos, Derek Schiller and Mike Plant of the Braves.
Yes, everybody wants to move on. But it’s difficult to move on without understanding what went wrong in the past and why anybody should be confident this dark chapter of franchise history won’t be repeated.
McGuirk attempted to do that. He said he knew nothing about Coppolella’s actions, which took place over a span of more than three years. That seems dubious. But that’s his story and he’s sticking to it, and neither Coppolella, nor Blakely, nor Hart — who stunningly was allowed to step back into his MLB Network job despite his soiled immediate past — are saying anything publicly to counter that.
McGuirk maintains Coppolella went rogue, that he did this all on his own. Whether you believe him, it’s the easiest way to protect the team brand and build trust with fans.
He said he knew nothing of rules violations until MLB contacted him.
“We measured that against the high-integrity operation we had run, (and) it got compromised by this guy,” McGuirk said, alluding to Coppolella. “We turned over anything and everything that MLB wanted. Just to use a bad analogy, it was a cancer that we discovered and cut out as quickly as we could do.”
It was and still is McGuirk’s responsibility to oversee budgets. So how is it possible he did not know millions of dollars were being illegally spent in the international market without his knowledge or suspicion? And if really he didn’t know, is that even a greater indictment as to how detached he was as a top executive?
“He was misusing budgets that he had, and he spent it in the wrong direction,” he said. “All I can tell you is, it was something nobody had any knowledge of. He kept it in a very tight cocoon of things that he was doing with people who were working for him. The day we found out was his last day.”
Coppolella declined comment when reached via text message.
In the old organizational structure, McGuirk said, Coppolella reported to Hart, who reported to John Schuerholz, who reported to him.
“I was too far away,” he said. In the new organizational structure, Anthopoulos and four other senior executives report directly to him. “I’m tethered more closely” to player personnel, he said.
It’s not certain what the end of “Coppy time” means for the organization moving forward. If Anthopoulos makes enough right moves, if there are more hits than misses in player development and Liberty Media eventually invests in player payroll, success is inevitable.
But winning is needed to regain the trust of the fan base. The team’s brand has been damaged — by this offseason, by perceptions the Braves have become an organization that cares more about lucrative real estate transactions than winning and by four consecutive losing seasons.
McGuirk, Schiller and Plant all maintain the Braves’ commercial real estate business, punctuated by the development of The Battery Atlanta, all is about giving Anthopoulos money to spend on players.
“We’ve cleared the deck for next year,” McGuirk said. “There will be very few teams that have as much to spend in the marketplace next winter as the Atlanta Braves. The opportunity to spend is there. But it will be done judiciously and sequentially when Alex says it’s time.”
McGuirk and other team executives are right about one thing: Winning cures all. It’s the Braves’ best hope of having this offseason become a faded memory.