Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
I think it's fair to grade them on a curve given the budget compared to some of those previous builds.
Recent history suggests if you give AA a luxury tax type budget you get a perennial contender and a WS title.
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He inherited most of that 2021 core to be honest though and he kind of joined the organization at the right time.
Snitker was already there as manager when AA was brought in.
Albies, Freeman, Riley, Swanson, and Acuna Jr. were all already in the organization.
Fried and Andersson were the anchors of the pitching staff and they were in the organization before AA too.
He brought in some key pieces in Morton, Ozuna, and Darnaud. And made some good deadline moves for a guy like Adam Duvall and Jorge Soler but the core of that team was there before he got there and they had a strong prospect pool that allowed him to acquire other pieces.
Also some luck involved now where a guy like Matt Olson was from Atlanta area and that was the only team he'd re-sign with - so made a trade easier - but also lost Freeman due to tension in negotiations that same offseason and had to spend assets to replace Freeman with Olson.
AA was a good guy to try to take a strong framework and push it over the top, but I'm still not sure he's built anything from the ground up. Even in Toronto some of his moves were good, but other moves like the RA Dickey trade and the trade with the Marlins weren't really that successful.
If anything the Jays should be looking to bring in John Coppolella now that he's been reinstated by MLB...as he probably did more to build that winner in Atlanta than AA did.
https://www.si.com/mlb/braves/news/b...-teams-success