The Los Angeles Dodgers recently lost a valuable piece in their front office in vice president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos, who accepted a job to become the executive vice president of baseball operations and general manager of the Atlanta Braves.
He faces a tough task ahead of him as the Braves were just hit with significant punishments for rules broken under the previous regime in regards to international amateur free agent signings.
The results of Major League Baseball’s investigation was the loss of 12 prospects and former general manager John Coppolella received a lifetime ban from baseball. Additionally, the Braves also will have less money than other teams to spend on international free agents in the next few years.
While it won’t be easy, Dodgers president Stan Kasten believes that Anthopoulos is the perfect person for the job due to his scouting background and the analytics knowledge he gained the last two years in the Dodgers front office, via David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“His background is scouting, which is near and dear to me and near and dear to everyone in Atlanta,” Kasten said, “because that’s the bedrock of the foundation, and that’s still the bedrock of every organization. But I think the additional experience he’s had over the last two years with the rest of the people in our front office gives him a combination of skills that very few people now have. So I think he’s the perfect … he’d be perfect anywhere, but for the Braves, I think they couldn’t have done better. I really feel that way.”
Kasten is very familiar with the Braves organization as he served as their president from 1986 until 2003.
Anthopoulos, 40, served as the Toronto Blue Jays general manager from 2009-2015, taking home Sporting News Executive of the Year honors in 2015, his last season before joining the Dodgers front office.
Atlanta finished last season with a 72-90 record, good enough for third place in the National League East. They have a ton of good young prospects though so Anthopolous has some talent to work with. He has already gotten to work, acquiring two familiar faces in Dodgers relievers Grant Dayton and Josh Ravin.
