The Red Sox announced this afternoon that former Braves GM Frank Wren has been hired as the team’s senior vice president of baseball operations. Wren, 57, worked with president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski previously in the Marlins and Expos organizations. He will add to the team’s new-look front office, which also features newly appointed general manager Mike Hazen, who was promoted yesterday after previously serving as the team’s assistant GM. Boston also announced that assistant director of player personnel Jared Banner has been promoted to director of player personnel.
Wren was rumored to be a candidate to step in as the new Red Sox general manager immediately upon Dombrowski’s hiring, although Jon Heyman of CBS Sports reported last week that he may ultimately sign on with a title other than GM. That appears to be the case, though based on Wren’s title, one can imagine him playing a significant role in baseball operations decision-making.
Per the press release announcing the move, Wren“will serve as a talent evaluator and will assist Dombrowski in all aspects of baseball operations.” Based on that description, Wren will report directly to Dombrowski, though he’ll still be underneath Hazen in terms of organizational hierarchy. As Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal tweets, it seems that Wren will be an aide but, unlike Hazen, won’t handle negotiations with agents or other teams.
The final years of Wren’s tenure as Braves general manager was marred by organizational missteps, as Atlanta made questionable free agent signings and extensions alike. Most notably, the signing of Melvin Upton Jr. and extensions for both Dan Uggla and Chris Johnson went south quickly. That’s not to say that none of the moves made with Wren in the GM chair panned out, of course; the acquisition of Justin Upton still looks to have been a win for the Braves, even if Upton has since been traded. Similarly, the Braves gave up little in the way of impact talent to acquire Michael Bourn and were rewarded with a season and a half of excellent play as well as draft compensation upon Bourn’s departure. (Here’s a full list of Wren’s transactions while serving as a GM, courtesy of the MLBTR Transaction Tracker.)
Nevertheless, the late missteps in Wren’s tenure outweighed the successes in the eyes of ownership, who replaced him with fellow veteran baseball ops exec John Hart. His new role with the Red Sox will be more limited, it seems, as he’ll serve primarily as a talent evaluator and will be based in Atlanta as opposed to in Boston, according to Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe and Sean McAdam of Comcast Sportsnet New England (Twitter links).
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
No. Words can’t even describe how awful this is.
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you do realize that wren, along with hazen and everyone else is going to be answering to dombrowski, right? he isnt going to go rogue all of a sudden
I don’t care. It’s not like he’s going to sit around twiddling his thumbs either. He’s terrible and I don’t want him anywhere near the Red Sox.
He is NOT terrible. Just dont let him negotiate any contracts.
He traded Teixeira to LAA for Casey Kotchman & Stephen Marek. Teixeira left to NYY during free agency. LAA got a compensatory pick for his departure in which they selected Mike Trout. Kotchman and Marek are no longer in baseball. Wren is no longer with the Braves.
I love this logic.
@rundmc1981
All GMs have made bad moves. And in the case for Wren, he’s made good moves too.
As long as you place Wren in a capacity where he uses his strengths, then this hiring is fine.
Just about every GM has a major blunder. Even the best of GMs have a few. Wren messed up both Tex trades.
He also drafted Simmons, Kimbrel, Wood, Drury, Ahmed, Delgado and Sean Gilmartin, and then some.
Wren did not make the original Tex trade, that was JS
Ugh….. Hopefully he doesn’t make any decisions.
Why…?
Nepotism
Not a fan of this decision, but this being nepotism is silly. You hire those you know and are comfortable around. Dombrowski has been in the business long enough to make a lot of friends, and he did just appoint a young in-house candidate as the GM. It’s not like he just hired Al Avila. Nepotism will be when Frank Wren trades for his son, Kyle, in the Brewers organization.
He did hire someone he knew. An idiot he knew who ruined the last team he was in charge of. He didn’t hire him because he was an expert decision maker…
nepotism technically has to involve family members. this would be cronyism since it’s based on past relationships and not actual accomplishments.
guess the Sox got a taste for under-achievement this year…
Not really. The definition of nepotism has broadened to include friends. It’s used fairly interchangeably with cronyism.
This is the greatest thing to happen to NYY since Babe Ruth.
hyperbole to the extreme engaged
If the Red Sox suddenly deal Yoan Moncada to the Yankees for a PTBNL, and we find out Frank Wren was chiefly involved, then the present hiring of Wren could very well indeed be the greatest thing to the Yankees since Ruth.
“If this thing I completely made up happens, and this guy with no decision making authority somehow made the decision so unilaterally that he’s actually responsible for it, well then we surely have something!”
So we kept Hazen, who had a part in this mess, and we bring on Wren, who made some curious moves in Atlanta. I’m confused.
Hazen wasn’t responsble for any problems. We are not in much of a mess anyway. The Sox have one of the top farm teams in baseball, a good young core, and an owner willing to spend. Henry/DD/Warner all have the final say, Wren and Hazen are really just advisers and don’t have any final say over big matters.
Ok… at very least he’s just a yes man. The fact that Dombrowski is still running the show is still the big thing to remember.
People seem to forget that Wren was good at making trades. It was his signings that killed the Braves. The contracts he handed out to FA and resignings are what was his problem.
The reason his trades were good because he ran off all the good scouts (including Roy Clark – who is back in ATL) and decimated the farm, in which we’re still trying to rebuild. No wonder he traded most of his prospects. But, when you draft your son (Kyle Wren), you know what you’re getting.
I’m never going to understand front-office structure at this point
So one front office has Dombrowski, Wren and Dipoto, but none of them are the GM? There are too many chefs in the kitchen.
We disagree.
Sincerely,
The Dodgers Front Office
Because the largest payroll in the history of the sport lands you the 6th best record in MLB — based off a team where the core of it was built by Ned Colletti.
Dipoto is just there on an interim basis. Wren and DD are said to have a great working relationship and Wren plans to conduct business from Atlanta so its unlikely he has that big of a decision making roll.
Not just not that big; he has no decision making power at all, he’s a talent evaluator.
Did the Red Sox forget that GM’s are not Pokemon, you don’t gotta catch ’em all!
DD caught a magickarp that he thinks will evolve into a gyarados. Instead, it will use splash to try to trade for Melvin Upton.
Wren must at least know Tackle by now.
He forgot it to learn leer.
Despite all of the flaws Wren could build a bulletproof bullpen from scratch and had a stretch of three or four years where he’d somehow get 150 or so innings from a washed up veteran.
Wait, senior VP of baseball operations is BENEATH the GM in the front office hierarchy? How?
It’s not a totally uniform structure across all teams. For example, Alex Anthopoulos is the Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations and General Manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.
And IIRC, the Rays don’t even use the GM title.
I know that but I thought that even in Alex’s case, the VP of baseball operations was the higher title. That’s why it made sense whhen people were talking about promoting him from VP to president of baseball operations and then hiring a GM to work under him. I always thought that the president and VP of baseball operations were the highest level baseball decision makers (not counting CEO, team president etc) and that the GM worked under them.
Hazen is above him because he’s senior VP of baseball ops AND general manager.
For what it’s worth, Allard Baird is Senior VP of baseball ops too.
DD makes the top decisions, not Hazen/Wren/Dipoto, that’s ALL that matters
The key phrase is “Won’t handle negotiations or signings.” If Dombrowski wants his wind-pipe, then that is fine, but Hazen in the GM role and giving Dipoto another Bogus title will make for 1 hell of a front office
Sorry Boston, but at least he’s not in charge of anything. Don’t let him negotiate contracts or sign guys he’s “wanted for a long time.” He does okay picking up relievers but that’s not particularly a skill yet luck counts for something.
The Red Sox are getting dumber by the day…a far cry from when Bill James was finding undervalued players like David Ortiz.