The Braves unexpectedly won the NL East last year and they did so with a bunch of exciting young players that should be around for a good while. That’s the stuff that sustains you as a fan: winning baseball and guys you want to root for. But I’m having a really, really hard time enjoying the Braves at the moment because, quite simply, the team’s front office thinks I’m a friggin’ moron.
That’s the only conclusion I can draw from this interview of Braves team president Terry McGuirk and general manager Alex Anthopoulos, conducted by David O’Brein and Jeff Schultz of The Athletic. It’s a masterwork of condescension, dishonesty and, at the end of the day, constitutes a clear signal that the Braves care about profits, first, second, third and foremost. “Sure, winning baseball is pretty spiffy, but let’s not keep our eyes off the prize, which is ‘financial flexibility,’” the Braves brass seems to be telling us.
Don’t just take my word for it. … Read More
(via Hardball Talk)
ALDLAND 
I typically do not read HBT, but I think the self-righteous indignation is warranted here, especially if management squanders another young core for the purpose of paying down capital debts. (In the interest of perhaps hyper-technicality, I will note with respect to the excerpted portion above that the remainder of the article belies the “dishonesty” charge; if anything, Anthopoulos and McGuirk are too honest in their ever-so-thinly veiled comments.