John Schuerholz 'stepping down' after 17 seasons.

As a Braves fan, this is extremely sad news. It is great he will stay on as President and to help train Wren, but Schuerholz is irreplaceable.

 

An enviable record of success and yet...with all that talent...Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, et al...only one WS championship. Or am I being too demanding?

 

Well, he was the one putting the talent together.

 

That was my issue with both he and the Braves, Moddy. The man ran around with a "Team of the '90s" ring on. That arrogance was a bit much ... the other part of what I dislike about Atlanta are the fair-weather fans, the ones who won't even go to playoff games because they were so sure that a World Series beckoned.

Only a fool could argue with Schuerholz's success, and I'm glad he was good to Casty and the other baseball types that needed him. But for all the pitching he assembled - Leo Mazzone deserves a lot of credit, too - I always found it mystifying that Atlanta lost way too many low-scoring games because the Braves might have focused too much on pitching and not enough of getting another bat or two. So Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz didn't allow more than 2-3 runs too often, but not being able to push a run or two across on a consistent basis during the postseason should have been addressed.

 

Regardless of the lack of championships (Hey, at least won one. Can any Duquette say that?), he, along with Bobby Cox, became the definition of consistency. Never met John, but from what I gather, he seems to be a class act. Tough act for Wren to follow.

 

So Jocketty gets fired, John steps down, Gillick is done after next year, it's a different era.

 

So would that be 'stepping down' or actually 'stepping up'? Do I need to change the title of the thread?

 

And Mets fans should be rejoicing about this news. We need something to cheer about. But seriously, I didn't see this coming. I remember listening to him just after the trade deadline and he was very animated, proud, etc. about the moves he pulled off. And he talked about the future too. It will be very interesting to see what happens now in the ATL.

 

Believe me, I'm a HUGE Braves fan and I never saw this coming. Had heard rumblings from time to time that Cox might up and quit, but never anything about Schuerholz. But when I read that he's 67 years old, perhaps it makes sense.

Any O's fans out there who can tell us anything about Wren? I know he was GM there for only one year, but I figure that's a product of Angelos. Seems to have done a pretty good job of scouting/evaluating young talent with the Braves ...

 

Mazzone's failures in Baltimore takes some of the aura from him. Does the Braves reign place Torre in a better context?

 

Key word with Mazzone is "some." I'm thinking of guys - Steve Avery is the first one and I'm sure there are numerous others - that were successful in Atlanta and couldn't cut it anywhere else. No doubt some of them weren't that good - see Bruce Chen. But I'm convinced there were others who were much better in Atlanta because of Mazzone that never duplicated their success elsewhere.

 

He did a couple of postseason interviews on local radio recently and nothing he said gave any indication this was even a remote possibility.