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Best of SGS: If I Ran The Atlanta Braves
By Jay Busbee | June 22, 2007
Wrapping up Best-Of week with a cross-post from the always-enjoyable If I Ran site…here’s our take on how to rght the Braves’ ship. Some predictions were spot-on, some a bit off the mark, but five months later, this doesn’t appear to be a totally insane post…
Hey all—Jay Busbee here from Sports Gone South, checking in to whip the Braves back into championship shape. Thanks to Eric and Sam for the opportunity…I’ll try not to leave a smoking hole where Turner Field would be. Lord knows we don’t want the traffic around there to get any worse.
Okay, so I run the Braves. The question is, am I running it from a general manager’s office, beholden to a faceless corporate media leader? Or am I myself that faceless corporate media? (‘Cause if so, screw the Braves…I’ll just warp popular opinion to make The Wire the most popular show on TV and “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” our national anthem.)
Anyway, let’s assume that I am now Lord and Master of Atlanta, and act accordingly. Coming into 2007, the Braves are fairly well set at most positions, particularly the bullpen, catcher, short, and two of the three outfield spots. They ought to contend for at least the wild card. So to start, I’d focus on some off-field issues:
Pump Up The Crowd. The Braves have a rep for being as dull as an insurance firm, and that’s the way they like it–do your business, win your games, go home and try not to run over any strippers on the way. Problem is, that’s not what gets a crowd rolling these days. I’d go Mark Cuban on the whole deal-—calling out Bud Selig, mocking other players (have a Barry Bonds Day, where every giveaway cap is size 14 and you get your choice of ‘clear’ or ‘cream’ toppings on your ice cream), generally getting the moribund Atlanta fan base riled up. Enough with the Red Sox/Yankees/Cubs fans coming in here and out-shouting the home crowd; we need to stick it back to them, and if it takes executing a guy in Yankee pinstripes on the Jumbotron, hey, we’ll do that too.
Reconnect With The City. This is a must for any sports team, not just the Braves. I’d have my guys out in the city constantly, doing appearances, showing up at schools, hanging at the Varsity. Atlanta’s fans got spoiled from all the playoff runs—don’t mock; you would too—so we need to bring ‘em back, one at a time if need be. Sponsor contests in the elementary schools, get the guys on every local talk show and furniture commercial, have ‘em rescue kittens out of trees…whatever it takes, we’ve got to remind the city that the Braves were winning division titles back when Mike Vick was smuggling candy bars into elementary school in his Boys II Men lunchbox.
Make Game Day An Experience. Turner Field is situated in probably the worst imaginable spot in the entire city of Atlanta, just south of a horrific knot of highways that, even on days without games, moves like cold syrup. And Atlanta’s vaunted rapid-transit system drops you off a mere mile and a half from the stadium. Parking is a goddamn nightmare; you can’t use the same route in or out two successive games. So we need to make people really want to come to the game, and I can sum it up in two words: free crap. Give all kinds of stuff away, from foam tomahawks to posters to bobbleheads. Shoot, turn the plaza out beyond centerfield into a freakin’ Tunisian bazaar. Sponsors would line up to plaster their logos on all kinds of goodies, and the kids (and sweaty fat single guys who are “collectors”) would go nuts for all this junk…and there’s a decent chance that we could turn a few of them into true baseball fans.
Which brings us to the on-field side of things. We’ve got only one major requirement:
Coin. Dinero. Cheddah. Benjamins. Paper. Whatever the hell you want to call it, we need money. More money. We’ve been stuck at an $80 mil payroll for the last three years when other teams are doubling and tripling that. And as long as Bud Selig doesn’t try to impose any kind of fiscal sanity on the game—one of the first things we’d take him to task for—we need to be able to go out and sign a $15 mil free agent without having to try to field just seven players to compensate. So we need to kick loose at least another $15-$20 million in annual payroll.
Wheel and Deal. We’ve got a surplus of solid relief pitching, several of whom could end up being starters somewhere else, plus some strong minor-leaguers, headed by Jarrod Saltalamacchia, a catcher who’s abruptly found his path to the majors blocked by new All-Star Brian McCann. Deal him and a pitcher for a solid outfielder—the Rays’ Rocco Baldelli or Delmon Young, say. And we’ll need that guy, because our next move will be:
Trade Andruw Jones. We’d deal Chipper if we could, but his age and injuries have demolished his trade value. But Andruw’s still young, and if we can’t get the money to sign him—unlikely, given the fact that Scott Boras will demand $20 million a year for six or more years—we need to deal him for proven players, not prospects. As any fantasy league manager can tell you, one superstar isn’t worth three proven starters. (Yes, we know Jones can veto any trade as a 10-5 guy, but we’d make it worth his while. Threaten to invade Curacao, maybe.)
End The Platooning. Manager Bobby Cox has this phenomenally frustrating habit of platooning two marginal-to-decent players at certain positions—left field and first, most often. Thing is, it’s been proven time and again that while there may be short-term benefits from doing the lefty-righty switch based on the pitcher, the long-term payoff of having one starter is much greater. Ryan Klesko and Adam LaRoche are the two most prominent examples of guys who flourished when given the chance to play every day. We’ve got a platooning situation looming this year in left…but not if I had anything to say about it.
Bring Back Tom Glavine. Let’s let him win his 300th in a Braves uni. Hell, not even Mets fans consider him a real Met. Glav deserves better in Atlanta than to have the lingering stain of being a players’ rep during the strike count against him.
Other than that, I’d let the guys play and see where things shake out. The Braves have what it takes to win the National League…we’ve just got to make sure that the fan experience measures up to that standard.
All right, everybody chop it with me now: WHOOOOOOA, OHHH OHHH OHHHHHHH….
Topics: Uncategorized, Baseball, Braves |
