A patient Braves general manager says “the talent is here”

He came in during a scandal like never seen before in Braves history. He was charged with continuing a process that started three years ago, to take a team in a four-year downward spiral to the next level.

Alex Anthopoulos is a 40-year old baseball executive who you could say has already had his dream job. He’s a native Canadian, who for six years was the general manager of the only remaining baseball team in his home country, the Toronto Blue Jays.

Now, in his second stint as the top baseball executive of a club, Anthopoulos inherits a Braves team with the best farm system in baseball and a fan base starving for a winner. He is the one who could determine the timetable for Atlanta’s success with the decisions he’ll make in the next few months.

Anthopoulos is a polo-wearing everyman who looks like a casual baseball fan, and since 2000 he has climbed the ladder in the sport to become a respected executive. When the Braves needed someone to take over for deposed general manager John Coppolella last November, Anthopoulos was the choice.

He had walked away from his job in Toronto two years earlier, amid reports the new team president wanted a more committee-like approach to the decision-making. Instead of aiming to immediately get another GM job, Anthopoulos wanted to learn more about a job he had already been good at.

“I wanted to go somewhere where I was going to challenge myself,” he said before a spring training game earlier this month. “I went to Los Angeles (the Dodgers), who I thought was at the forefront of the analytical side of the game. Two years there helped me a ton. Hopefully, I take all those experiences and bring them to Atlanta with me and add to all the good things that have already been done here.”

Anthopoulos is not the typical younger general manager, one who might walk around a baseball field with a calculator in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. While he embraces launch angle and exit velocity and the fancy terms now infiltrating the game, Anthopoulos is one who would rather go scout an amateur prospect than sit at a desk looking at hitting charts and numbers.

When he took over in Toronto, Anthopoulos had been the assistant general manager for four years, so he knew everyone and had the keys to all the locked doors. With Atlanta, he knew only a few people and had to learn everything, like starting the first day at a new school.

Instead of coming in and showing there was a new sheriff in town, Anthopoulos took a very measured approach to roster construction. For a team in transition, with young players on the team and more on the way, the Braves did very little to bring in new talent. Anthopoulos wanted to see what he had before he knew what he needed.

“A lot of good has been done here,” he explained. “Everyone talks about the talent at the big-league level and the minor league level. It hasn’t shown up in the win column, but we can go around the diamond and see how much talent there is. And obviously there’s a ton of talent at the minor league level. My view was embrace what’s been done well, the positives of this organization. To come in from the outside, without the perspective, without the knowledge base, to make big, impactful decisions, I think would have been the wrong move.”

The only significant trade Anthopoulos made was to rid the Braves of Matt Kemp’s remaining two-year contract. He traded Kemp to the Dodgers for salaries that would instead be coming off the books after this season, giving the Braves much more financial flexibility next winter.

Let them play

Anthopoulos had never seen Ronald Acuna, Jr., baseball’s top prospect, before spring training. He knew only what scouting reports said about the other top players Braves fans are hoping can turn the franchise around.

“I had strong opinions from the outside, but certainly not strong enough to act on them without being here and being around these guys day in and day out,” Anthopoulos said. “I want to see these guys get at bats, get innings and see how they handle 2018. It allows me to learn more about the makeup of the players, talking to them, being around them, getting to know our big-league staff, our amateur staff, getting to know the player development side.

“From a timing standpoint, it worked out because we need to give guys opportunities, and the best thing right now is to just let them play and let things develop. At that point, we’ll have a greater sample size to make a decision on what they’re going to be going forward.”

So, the spring training that was an evaluation period for Anthopoulos will carry over into the regular season, which starts Thursday at 4:10 p.m. when the Braves host the Phillies at SunTrust Park. The expectations for a team that won only 72 games last year are low, and it’s hard to know how successful the Braves will be with a roster that will evolve throughout the season.

“I can guarantee you the 25 we start with won’t be the 25 we end with,” Anthopoulos said.

Acuna will spend a few weeks in Triple-A, and he will arrive in mid-April with great fanfare. Anthopoulos said Acuna can “really do everything on a field,” and Acuna showed that with a great spring training.

The 20-year-old Acuna will likely be joined in midseason by someone else not old enough to legally drink. Mike Soroka is Atlanta’s best pitching prospect, and there are more behind him, like Max Fried, Kolby Allard and Kyle Wright. Then, there’s another wave behind them.

The heart of Atlanta’s current lineup is young, with 21-year-old Ozzie Albies at second base, and Dansby Swanson and Johan Camargo, projected to be the primary starters at shortstop and third base, both only 24. Austin Riley, soon to be 21, could push Camargo at third base in midseason.

“The tough part about young players is when do they break out,” Anthopoulos said. “Is it in 2018? Is it in 2019? The volatility of youth, good and bad, gives us upside to really make some noise this year. We may make incremental strides and it might be two years from now. My hope and expectations are that the players get better. With all the talent we have, the win total should climb.”

That’s what Braves fans are hoping for. They’ve been hearing about prospects for several years. They’ve been asked to be patient, to wait on the waves of players who will make up the core of this team into the next decade. Simple improvement is the goal, and the man who showed the most patience by not making a big splash believes the corner has been turned in the rebuilding process. Like Anthopoulos, we all just now must wait and see what happens.

“We didn’t necessarily make a ton of moves in the offseason, but there’s upside,” he said. “There’s talent at every spot, and there’s upside at every spot for guys to have good, impactful years. Will that happen? We’ll find out. Will guys take a step forward? Will they stall? Will they regress? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised by anyone or all of these players taking a step forward because the talent is there.”

This story was originally published March 29, 2018 at 1:21 PM with the headline "A patient Braves general manager says “the talent is here”."