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Dayton Moore Unlikely To Leave Royals For Braves

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Within his latest AL Notes column, FanRag’s Jon Heyman writes that Royals GM Dayton Moore doesn’t appear to be going anywhere despite rumors about him possibly taking over the Braves’ front office. Moore, who cut his teeth in the front office world as a Braves exec, has been an oft-rumored replacement for John Coppolella in Atlanta following his resignation as general manager.

  • The Braves were leaning toward a managerial change before last week’s scandal with now-former GM John Coppolella, Heyman reports. Internal candidates Bo Porter and Ron Washington, both former big league managers, were the leading candidates to take over the dugout, and Heyman writes that one of the two would “likely” have been handed that job. Instead, Brian Snitker will keep his post. Meanwhile, with Moore likely to remain loyal to the Royals, some candidates that are “in the mix,” per Heyman, include former Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington, former Marlins general manager Dan Jennings and current Nationals assistant GM Doug Harris.
  • Also on the subject of the Braves, Heyman writes in his NL Notes roundup that the team is waiting for R.A. Dickey to determine whether he wants to play in 2018 or retire. Atlanta would be “happy” to pick up his $8MM option for the 2018 season after he ably served as an innings eater and a veteran mentor to the team’s young pitchers.

Latest On Braves' GM Search

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  • Braves director of baseball operations Billy Ryan is a candidate to take over as their general manager, along with the previously reported trio of Royals GM Dayton Moore and Nationals assistants Doug Harris and Dan Jennings, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today. However, according to the Nationals, the Braves haven’t yet requested permission to interview anyone from their organization (Twitter links). Of course, no matter how the Atlanta organization proceeds, it has more questions to answer than who’ll take over for resigned GM John Coppolella. As David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes, some in the game anticipate the league will uncover broad malfeasance by the organization. There are quite a few remaining questions, writes O’Brien, for a club that now has to operate with care to get back on the right track.

Braves Granted Permission To Speak To Harris, Jennings About GM Job

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  • The Nationals granted the Braves permission to speak to Nats assistant GM Doug Harris and special assistant Dan Jennings about Atlanta’s general manager vacancy, David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (Twitter link).  Earlier this week, Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post reported that Nats GM Mike Rizzo contacted Braves upper management to give Harris a recommendation.  Harris was originally hired as Washington’s farm director in 2010 and has since risen to the AGM and VP of player personnel roles, as well as overseeing the Nationals’ minor league system.  He has also worked with John Hart before, as Harris was a Rangers scout when Hart was Texas’ general manager.  Jennings, of course, is best known for his long stint with the Marlins, most notably as their general manager and then on-field manager.  In another tweet, O’Brien hears from the Braves that their GM search “will likely be slow developing,” which isn’t surprising given the abrupt nature of the team’s front office shakeup earlier this week.

Cafardo On Braves' Front Office

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  • Royals GM Dayton Moore will only head to Atlanta if the Braves give him complete control, according to Cafardo. That jibes with a previous report from USA Today’s Bob Nightengale and suggests that president John Hart would have to exit for a Moore-Braves union to come to fruition. Hart isn’t planning on leaving, however, Cafardo reports. Two members of the Nationals’ front office – assistant GM Doug Harris and the previously reported Dan Jennings – as well as ex-Red Sox GM Ben Cherington (now in Toronto) are on Hart’s radar as he seeks a replacement for John Coppolella, Cafardo relays.

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MLB Still Investigating Braves

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The league’s investigation into the Braves for international signing violations is still ongoing, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports tweets. Indeed, MLB is sending out investigators to chat with club officials this week. It’s doubtful that any results will be released while the postseason is ongoing, but all eyes will be on commissioner Rob Manfred as things progress. The investigation has already resulted in the resignations of Atlanta GM John Coppolella and special assistant Gordon Blakely; at this point, it’s far from clear just where it could go and what kind of fallout might occur.

Latest On Braves' Front Office, Dayton Moore

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  • Heyman also reports that Braves chairman John Schuerholz and president of baseball ops John Hart are “said to be at odds” with one another, though Hart firmly denied the notion. “John and I are lifelong friends, and there is mutual baseball respect as well,” Hart tells Heyman. “Nobody totally agrees on every player, staff member, etc. That’s just baseball.” Heyman adds that Schuerholz “would love” to bring Royals GM Dayton Moore on board to run the team’s baseball ops department and groom Schuerholz’s son, Jonathan. The younger Schuerholz is currently the team’s assistant director of player development. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweeted yesterday that Moore is “more open” to leaving the Royals for the Braves than in the past, though the decision will likely boil down to whether he’s given full authority over the team’s baseball operations department. That’d suggest that Hart sticking around and holding onto the “president” title he’s held for the past few seasons would be a deterrent to hiring Moore.

Braves Exercise Brian Snitker’s 2018 Option

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TODAY: Atlanta has announced that it is bringing back Snitker for 2018. Decisions on the coaching staff have yet to be made, the team noted.

YESTERDAY: The Braves are picking up manager Brian Snitker’s option for the 2018 season, Bill Shanks of the Macon Telegraph first reported (via Twitter). David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that decisions about the coaching staff are still being made, adding there won’t be a formal announcement of Snitker’s return until later this week.

The Atlanta organization didn’t finish the season well, limping to a 72-90 win-loss record after playing at a .500 clip through the first ninety games. That was the opposite scenario from the year prior, when the team improved after Snitker took the helm in the middle of the season.

It’s tough to blame Snitker too much for the struggles, though. While the front office evidently hoped for better, the team was relying on a mix of inexperienced players and aging veterans that never looked to make up a particularly reliable roster.

As the regular season wound down, there was plenty of speculation that the Braves would move on from Snitker and go out looking for another skipper to help the club move into contention. Then came the shocking departure of GM John Coppolella, which suddenly introduced uncertainty into an organization that had hoped for a return to its former stability.

Per O’Brien, the players generally support Snitker. With the fallout from the Coppolella situation still percolating — the league is still working through its investigation and the team will need to hire a new GM — president of baseball operations John Hart and president John Schuerholz may have decided the time was not right to pursue a change in the dugout.

Julio Teheran Switches Agencies

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Braves right-hander Julio Teheran has changed representation and is now a Wasserman client, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (via Twitter).

Set to turn 27 in January, Teheran is coming off the worst full season of his professional career by most statistical measures. While he continued to demonstrate durability with his fifth straight season of 185 or more innings, Teheran saw his strikeout, walk and home-run rates all trend in the wrong direction. In 188 1/3 innings, he averaged 7.2 K/9 against 3.4 BB/9 with an ugly 1.48 HR/9 mark en route to a 4.49 ERA. That ERA was the highest of his career, and metrics like FIP (4.95), xFIP (4.96) and SIERA (4.89) actually painted an even more troublesome picture.

Teheran did pitch better away from the newly constructed and homer-friendly SunTrust Park, though the discrepancy between his performance wasn’t quite as large as his 5.86 home ERA and 3.14 road ERA would suggest at first glance. His K/BB numbers and batted-ball profile were all relatively similar, but he enjoyed an unsustainable 83.7 percent strand rate on the road that helped to buoy his bottom-line run prevention numbers. On the plus side, Teheran is nowhere near the top of the leaderboard for average exit velocity or number of 95+ mph balls yielded, as measured by Statcast, so perhaps there’s some hope for better fortune with the long ball in 2018 and beyond.

He’ll have plenty of time to work on reestablishing himself as a quality mid-rotation piece moving ahead, as Teheran is still under contract through at least the 2019 season thanks to the six-year, $32.4MM contract he inked prior to the 2014 campaign. He’s slated to earn $8MM in 2018 and $11MM in 2019, and that contract contains a $12MM option ($1MM buyout) for the 2020 season as well. Even if the Braves — or a team to which he’s theoretically traded — exercise the option, Teheran would still hit the open market as a 29-year-old on the brink of his age-30 campaign.

His switch in representation has been noted in MLBTR’s Agency Database, which contains agent information on more than 2,500 Major League and Minor League players. If you come across any errors or omissions in the database, let us know via email: mlbtrdatabase@gmail.com.

More Members Of Braves' Scouting Dept. Could Resign

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  • The hammer dropped Monday on Braves general manager John Coppolella and special assistant Gordon Blakely, both of whom resigned over alleged rule violations. Their departures might not be the end, either, as David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweets that it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more members of the Braves’ scouting department forced to resign.

MLB Investigating Braves’ Kevin Maitan Signing

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9:31pm: Coppolella and the Braves allegedly agreed to a deal this summer with 14-year-old Haitian Dominican shortstop prospect Robert Puason, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. As Rosenthal points out, Puason isn’t eligible to sign until he’s 16, so the Braves are in violation if they did indeed reach an agreement with him. But the league is also investigating other teams for agreeing to sign underage prospects, per Rosenthal. One international scouting director informed him that up to 15 clubs have reached deals with players who, like Puason, aren’t allowed to sign until 2019. Keith Law of ESPN adds (on Twitter) that there are some prospects who can’t sign until 2020 but already have verbal agreements with teams. The current international setup has led to frustration from baseball officials, meaning there will be another attempt to institute a worldwide draft after the collective bargaining agreement expires in 2021, Rosenthal writes.

As for Maitan, Rosenthal relays that MLB hasn’t found any improprieties in his signing to this point, though that could change.

6:19pm: As part of its investigation into ousted Braves general manager John Coppolella’s alleged violations of its international rules, Major League Baseball is looking into the team’s 2016 signing of prospect Kevin Maitan, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reports in a must-read piece. In what would be a stunning development, MLB could declare the 17-year-old Maitan a free agent if it finds improprieties in the signing, according to Passan.

The Coppolella-led Braves inked the Venezuelan-born Maitan to a $4.25MM bonus at the outset of last year’s international free agent period. Maitan was the top free agent in the 2016 class and drew comparisons to Braves legend Chipper Jones, Miguel Cabrera and Miguel Sano at the time of his signing. In the months before Maitan joined the Braves, he lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Florida for “a significant amount of time” with another teenage prospect who also signed with the team, Passan details. It’s unclear, though, whether the Braves funded the prospects’ stay in the U.S., Passan adds.

In 2017, his first season in the Atlanta organization, the switch-hitting Maitan played shortstop at the rookie level and slashed .241/.290/.340 with two home runs in 176 plate appearances. MLB.com ranks him as the No. 5 prospect in the Braves’ deep farm system and the 38th-best youngster in the game. Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs (No. 67) and Baseball America (No. 71) also regard Maitan as a top 75 prospect.

Coppollela may have skirted regulations when signing Maitan, but it seems he also disregarded MLB’s rules domestically. In August 2016, for instance, Coppolella allegedly contacted the representative for an impending free agent wanting to discuss the player well before the market opened in November, which would have violated tampering rules, per Passan. Additionally, Passan explains that Coppolella is alleged to have offered 2017 second-round pick Drew Waters a car in order to get him to sign a below-slot deal. The Braves signed the 18-year-old outfielder to a $1.5MM bonus that came in under the $1.675MM slot value of Waters’ pick, No. 41 overall, but his agent, Keith Grunewald, told sources Passan spoke with that Coppolella’s car offer was only made as a joke. Coppolella met with MLB officials in New York last week to discuss the accusations against him, Passan relays.

While it appears MLB could seriously punish the Braves for their actions under Coppollela, his career in the game may be over. Coppolella’s methods in Atlanta did not win him many fans among either his peers around the league or fellow members of the Braves’ front office, Passan writes. One high-ranking Braves official revealed to Passan that things became toxic with Coppolella around, saying last week that “this place is totally [expletive] up. I just hope when it blows up, it doesn’t take all of us down.”

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