I’ll drink to your drinking. 
Relax Craig - you doin’ good.

Happy Monday evening everybody.

Embarassing?  Should I guess you are not a litigator, comfortable asking the strangers in the jury box for approval?  You should be shouting from the highest mountain how good your blog is becoming and welcoming the low-grade publicity you are garnering.

But anyway ...

I thought you were too generous with your grade for Wren.  I didn’t like the length of the Lowe deal and think he will be pulling the next good team down rather than pushing them up.  In Kawakami think too much money was put into a 30+ year old from Japan who lacks a strong out pitch.  And signing Garrett Anderson rather than just playing Matt Diaz strikes me as a silly waste of money.

But more importantly, he does exactly the opposite of what you praised Bobby Cox for: keeping a quiet and calm atmosphere.  I didn’t have a problem with not signing Furcal, but the public fued with his agent was unbecoming.  The publicity surrounding the Griffey negotiations was something that never happened with Schuerholz at the helm.  The similar efforts to land another starter before ending up with Lowe were similarly loud and grating after JS’s quiet and private dealings.  I didn’t have a problem with underbidding Boston for Smoltz’s services, but bridges were again unecessarily burned there too.  Glavine’s resigning and departure too were handled in such a poor fashion that Schuerholz himself gave a public appology for how it went down.

I guess I can summarize it by saying that many of his personnel moves are individually average to better than average, but the quiet professionalism that was a hallmark of the dynastic Braves has been replaced by what appears to be a flighty and press driven approach more seemingly appropriate for a Peter Angelos trained GM.