sign in sign up
<<
Home , Gwinnett Stripers, Jackie Robinson Day, Mississippi Braves, Rome Braves

Braves Clippings Friday, April 24, 2020 Braves.com

A chat with , on his love for the game

By Mike Lupica

This was the best possible day, in this spring when there are no games. This was as much baseball as you could ever want, the great Hank Aaron on the other end of the line.

“What do you want to talk about?” he said.

I smiled at the sound of his voice.

“Everything,” I said.

We started with , because Jackie Robinson Day was just last week, and because Mr. Robinson’s struggles in 1947, and the way he handled them, so much informed the way Mr. Aaron handled racism a quarter-century later when he was on the way to breaking Babe Ruth’s all- time record.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did if I didn’t have the memory of what he did, and the courage he showed,” Aaron said. “I got all those hateful letters at the time. I had to walk my children to school. I had to go in the back door of some ballparks and leave the same way and sometimes I slept at those ballparks. And the thing was, I never thought I was trying to break Babe Ruth’s record. I was just trying to set my own.

“I was thinking later on, when Pete Rose was trying to break [Ty Cobb’s] all-time record, how much people loved Pete and were rooting for him. I wish I could have had a little of that love.”

Then he was back to Jackie Robinson. Henry Aaron was 13 years old when Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

“He was good at everything,” Aaron said. “I mean everything. Even cards!”

He laughed again, full of fun and memory on this day, making it a fine baseball day all by himself. I told him I had just written about Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal, trying to decide who was the ace when you looked at the 1960s from end to end.

“I know he didn’t come along until later,” Aaron said, “but there was a young man who came along at the end of the decade who belongs in that conversation, and that was Mr. Seaver.”

I asked how he’d done against Koufax.

“Well,” he said, “I guess the best way to explain it to you is this: We had an understanding, Sandy and me.”

Now I laughed.

“And what exactly was that understanding?”

“That sometimes he was gonna get me,” Hank Aaron said, “and sometimes I was gonna get him.”

Then I wanted to know if he thought any active player might ever make a run at his total of 755 home runs.

“My goodness,” he said. “Now I don’t want to evade the question, I really don’t, so let me put it to you this way: I don’t know of anyone at this moment who will be able to have enough good years. They can all have a good year. A great year. And more than one. These kids today, not just in baseball but and football and , they can do three times the things we could do in my day. But I just wonder which one of them will be able to do it long enough, or want to do it as long as I did, with all the money there is nowadays.” We were talking then about this modern, analytic notion that RBIs don’t matter as much as we once thought they did, only because No. 44 had more career RBIs (2,297) than any ballplayer who ever lived.

“Oh, my, are they wrong,” he said. “To me, a was the greatest thing in the world. I am telling you the truth now, but I would feel so horrible when I was at the plate and would leave a runner on second base or third base and not get them home. All night long, I’d feel as if I’d let my team down. My whole baseball career, there were two things I didn’t want to do: I didn’t want to strike out, and I didn’t want to leave a runner in scoring position.”

By the way? He played 23 years in the big leagues and never once struck out 100 times in a season. And only went past 90 three times. Hitting all those home runs. Finishing with a lifetime batting average of .305. I asked on Thursday if he had any regrets and his response was immediate.

“I know I had a fantastic career,” he said. “But if there was one thing I did not like at all was that I never won the Triple Crown. I look back now and can’t figure out how I didn’t win two or three.”

I asked him what he does to fill the baseball void in his life right now. Hank Aaron laughed again and said, “Why, I watch those classic games [on MLB Network] and pretend I’m watching them for time.”

We were talking then about how the season didn’t start when it was supposed to at the end of March, and how ended prematurely before that.

“You want to hear a story about Spring Training?” he said. “I can remember three straight springs in Bradenton, Fla., where I didn’t miss a single game. Not one. I finally went to the and said, ‘Am I supposed to be playing every day?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘You’re the one they all came to see.’”

He talked on Thursday about how much he hated hearing about the sign stealing done by the Astros and -- to a lesser extent -- the Red Sox.

“They cheated,” he said. “I don’t know what else you could call it. They cheated themselves and they cheated our game. It made me very sad.”

He is 86 now. His friend Willie Mays turns 89 at the beginning of May. “Tell Willie I’m gaining on him,” Hank Aaron said. All they did and all they saw in their sport after they made it as kids from Alabama to immortality, and now they see a spring like this, without baseball.

I asked Hank Aaron, the conscience of this game and as much the soul of this game as Willie, if he thought we will have baseball this year.

“Put it this way,” he said. “I weep at the thought that we might not.”

He paused then and in a quiet voice Hank Aaron said, “I love baseball.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

MLB ‘looking at a lot of options’ for a season, CEO says

By Tim Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The CEO of Braves owner Liberty Media fielded the question Thursday of whether there will be a baseball season this year.

“I think it’s an uncertain question,” Greg Maffei said in a live interview on CNBC, “but the (MLB) commissioner believes there will be baseball. The real question is, will we have enough games to be able to have a full credible season that allows us to … produce winners of divisions and the like?”

Maffei said MLB is “looking at a lot of options,” including the widely reported idea of having all teams play their games in Arizona without fans in attendance, to start a season delayed indefinitely by the coronavirus pandemic.

“If baseball does resume … it seems most likely it’ll resume first with players only and no fans present,” Maffei said.

He said the Arizona plan is among many possibilities under consideration, some of which he said are not publicly known.

“There is a high threshold to try and make some of those things work in terms of getting people there and maintaining the health,” Maffei said. “That’s first and foremost -- the safety of the players and obviously the safety of any fans that may participate.

“But there’s obviously a lot of pent-up demand for baseball as well,” Maffei added. “Nothing says America is working better than baseball starting up again. So trying to balance that desire against safety is the key. And I think the commissioner is all over this.”

Earlier Thursday, Maffei told investment analysts on a conference call that the Braves have sufficient liquidity to weather a year without games if it comes to that. “The scale of their needs, even in a no-season scenario, is much less than the need or burn rate at either a Live (Nation) or a Formula One,” Maffei said, referring to two other businesses in the company’s portfolio.

MLB has committed to pay $170 million in salary advances to players across the 30 teams in April and May -- $5.67 million per team on average.

“If there’s no season, there is no more requirement for payment to the players,” Maffei said on the conference call. “170 (million dollars) across 30 teams is not a massive amount of money in terms of a drain. There are other costs, obviously, but the players are the single largest expense. So liquidity at (the Braves), we think, is more than sufficient.”

Maffei’s conference call and CNBC interview were conducted primarily to discuss Liberty Media’s complicated decision, announced Thursday, to change the attribution of its Live Nation stake and other assets and liabilities between its and its Liberty SiriusXM Group. The Braves remain a separate tracking stock under the Liberty umbrella.

The Athletic

MLB report pins Red Sox violations on staffer, issues suspension, takes draft pick

By Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich

Major League Baseball’s ruling on the ’s illegal sign stealing in 2018 determined the primary culprit was not the front office, manager Alex Cora or the players, but the team’s video replay system operator.

The league, in findings that will be released Wednesday afternoon, suspended the operator, J.T. Watkins, and docked the Red Sox a second-round pick in the 2020 draft. It also suspended Cora through the conclusion of the 2020 postseason, but only for his conduct as Astros bench coach in 2017, not as Red Sox manager in ’18, when the team won 108 games and the .

Following a January report from The Athletic on the Red Sox’s conduct, Commissioner found that Watkins, on at least some occasions during the 2018 regular season, illegally utilized game feeds in the replay room to help players during games — an undertaking less egregious than the Astros’ famed 2017 sign-stealing scheme.

The league did not find that Boston’s impermissible conduct continued during the 2018 postseason or 2019 regular season.

Manfred said the investigation included interviews with 65 witnesses, including 34 current and former Red Sox players, as well as reviews of tens of thousands of emails, text messages, video clips and photographs. The league’s department of investigations interviewed some witnesses multiple times, and Manfred said he personally met with several.

Watkins, who according to Manfred’s report vehemently denies engaging in wrongdoing, will be suspended without pay for the 2020 regular season and prohibited from serving as a replay room operator for the 2021 regular season and postseason.

Manfred, in requiring the Red Sox to forfeit a draft pick, said, “The club must be held accountable, particularly since the club may have benefited from Watkins’ conduct.” The commissioner again did not discipline players, adhering to his September 2017 decision in the wake of the so-called “Apple Watch incident” that led to fines for both the Red Sox and Yankees, as well as a later immunity agreement with the baseball players’ union. But the commissioner indicated he wouldn’t have had interest in disciplining players in this particular instance, noting “this is not a case in which I would have otherwise considered imposing discipline on players.”

The Red Sox issued the following statement on Wednesday afternoon:

It was in 2017 that Manfred publicly said he would hold the general manager and manager responsible for any future sign-stealing misconduct. He restated that position Jan. 13 in his report announcing his discipline of the Astros for illegal sign stealing.

But with the Red Sox, the league essentially determined that Watkins acted as a rogue employee. Manfred absolved Cora and his coaches from responsibility and found the team’s front office effectively communicated baseball’s sign-stealing rules to non-player staff.

Not all of the players understood what constituted a violation, however.

“Many players told my investigators that they were unaware that in-game sign decoding from the replay station had been prohibited in 2018 and 2019,” the report says.

The Red Sox and Cora said they agreed to a mutual parting on Jan. 14, the day after Manfred found the Astros’ guilty of sign-stealing violations, saying they “collectively decided that it would not be possible for Alex to effectively lead the club going forward.” In his Astros ruling, Manfred said Cora played a significant role in devising Houston’s illegal sign-stealing. Manfred did not include discipline for Cora when he announced his penalties for the Astros in January. At that point, baseball’s investigation of the Red Sox was less than a week old, and Manfred said he would wait for its conclusion before determining Cora’s punishment.

“I do not find that then-Manager Alex Cora, the Red Sox coaching staff, the Red Sox front office, or most of the players on the 2018 Red Sox knew or should have known that Watkins was utilizing in-game video to update the information that he had learned from his pregame analysis,” Manfred wrote in Wednesday’s report. “Communication of these violations was episodic and isolated to Watkins and a limited of Red Sox players only.”

As a result, the penalties baseball imposed on the Red Sox were far lighter than what the Astros received for violations that occurred during the 2017 regular season and their postseason run to the World Series title, as well as the 2018 regular season.

Those penalties included the losses of two first-round and second-round draft picks, a $5 million fine and suspensions without pay for general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch through the end of the 2020 World Series. Astros owner Jim Crane announced the dismissals of Luhnow and Hinch later that same day.

The Astros’ sign-stealing system included real-time relay to hitters on the type of pitch was coming. Manfred also said that Luhnow “had some knowledge” of the Astros’ illegal activity, “but did not give it much attention” and “failed to take any adequate steps to ensure that his club was in compliance with the rules.”

The league viewed the Red Sox’s conduct as far less severe — both in the way the front office attempted to comply with the rules, not wanting to commit a second offense on top of its violation in the “Apple Watch incident,” and in the way the team stole signs through the illegal use of electronics during games.

The Red Sox’s form of communication was replay room to dugout to baserunner to hitter — a less direct and flagrant method than setting up a television monitor to more easily bang on a trash can pitch by pitch, which the Astros did at home in 2017. The Astros’ system was triggered by a center-field camera and a video screen positioned near the dugout; no one on the playing field was involved in stealing the sign.

Since the advent of instant-replay challenges, every team has a designated staff member who mans the video-replay station during a given game, home or on the road. That staff member typically has other duties with the club, such as advance work: helping prepare players for a given game or series. Watkins’ regular responsibilities in Boston included decoding signs before and after games, a legal act in the sport — so long as he does not decode live during a game and tell the players what he’s found. Determining whether that happened in Boston was one of MLB’s central tasks.

During home games, Watkins was stationed in a room very close to the Red Sox dugout at , in the same small area where the batting cage is, an area with a lot of foot traffic and hitters coming in and out. He traveled with the team on the road, as well.

“Prior to the start of the 2018 season, the Red Sox moved the replay station from a relatively remote upstairs area to a small room just outside of the dugout that also housed several stations for players to review clips of their past at bats, known as BATS stations,” the commissioner wrote. “Watkins was the sole Red Sox employee staffed in this replay room, but other staff and players trafficked in and out of the room to review the BATS monitors or speak to Watkins about his advanced research on various topics.”

In addition to Watkins’ denial of decoding signs during the game via the replay system, the league said that 30 players said they had no knowledge of such behavior.

MLB investigators talked to six witnesses who observed Watkins write out signs during the game, and 11 said that Watkins communicated sign information in a way that indicated he obtained it during the game. Four witnesses said Watkins used gestures or notes to communicate to them sign sequence information when a major league employee assigned to watch over video rooms was present.

“One player, who was interviewed twice, said that he had no doubt that Watkins utilized the replay room to decode signs on occasion, and said that he watched Watkins attempt to decode the sign sequence by writing sign information on computer paper while he watched the replay station in the replay room and then circling the correct sign in the sequence after the pitch was thrown,” Manfred said. “Another player said that he believed that 90% of Watkins’s sign sequence information was obtained from his advance work, but that 10% of the time Watkins ‘obviously’ updated that information from in-game video feeds.”

Manfred wrote that Watkins admitted he communicated sign information during games to players — but that he said when he did so, it was based on old information, not newly discovered during that same game.

“Similarly, if a baserunner had decoded signs from second base and reported the information back to him, Watkins would circulate that information to other players,” the investigation found. “In fact, he asserted that players were aware that they were supposed to routinely provide him with sign information gathered when they were on second base.”

Manfred said Watkins admitted that in 2018 and 2019, he did indeed notice sign sequences while working replay, but that he would keep only a mental log and would not send the information to players.

Watkins also “electronically bookmarked games whenever a player reached second base so that he could incorporate the ensuing at bat into his postgame research.” MLB announced its investigation of the Red Sox on Jan. 7, the day The Athletic reported that three people who were with the team in 2018 said that at least some players visited the video replay room during regular-season games to learn the sign sequence opponents were using.

The Red Sox have been punished for sign-stealing behavior before, on September 15, 2017, a ruling that his office viewed as a line in the sand. Both the Red Sox and Yankees were fined for impermissible conduct, the Red Sox a larger amount. The Yankees had video of a Red Sox athletic trainer looking at a wearable device in the dugout and relaying what he was told to players.

In his statement announcing those penalties, Manfred said he received “absolute assurances” from the Red Sox that they would not again engage in illegal sign-stealing activity, and also warned every other team.

“The clubs were on notice,” Manfred recalled this winter, “that however the commissioner’s office dealt with these issues historically, going forward, I viewed them with a particular level of seriousness.”

Atlanta Business Chronicle

Atlanta Braves affiliates facing elimination: 'It would be a setback'

By Eric Jackson

The are one of the MLB clubs that could see their minor league teams cut soon.

Minor League Baseball is expected to agree to a new PBA deal that would cut 160 affiliates down to 120, according to Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper. The realignment falls in line with the proposed restructure plan that was leaked last year. Due to fallout from the coronavirus, there may be less resistance from minor league teams, who already operate on thin profit margins.

“It’s definitely presenting a challenge for minor baseball league teams,” said Jeff Lantz, Senior Director of Communications. “On a regular business model year, you would budget for three or four rainouts. Anything more than that, you’re in a little bit of trouble. Now we’re talking teams potentially losing 30-40 percent of their home schedule if this thing doesn’t run its course pretty soon. So teams are definitely in a hole already.”

The current PBA is set to expire on Sept. 30 and negotiations on a new deal continued on Wednesday.

If 25 percent of the teams are cut in the realignment, that would likely mean the end for the and the who were included in the initial proposal last year that outlined 42 teams who would be eliminated.

The Danville Braves are the rookie-level affiliate for the Atlanta Braves. The farm team has played in Danville, Va. since 1993 and has featured up- and-coming stars from Jermaine Dye to . The elimination of the Braves would be a hard hit for both the city and its fans.

“They spend a great deal at the hotels locally,” City Manager Ken Larking said. “The economic impact for the companies that support the fact that there’s a team here in Danville for a few months is very important to them. I know our team is very involved in our community, so they make donations of either cash or in-kind services for (local) organizations. Obviously while they’re here they are buying meals and stuff and paying taxes related to that so it certainly would have some impact.”

The Braves still have two years left on their lease at American Legion Field. The team’s removal would result in over 60 job losses for part-time and full-time employees, not including members of the team. Larking is optimistic, though, that if the Braves do end up leaving Danville the city could recover financially thanks the addition of new industries and revitalization of downtown.

“It would be a setback obviously. It’s not something we want by any means, but the city would be able to move forward with a positive trajectory. Of course, that’s if you forget what everyone is doing with Covid-19. But subtracting that out of the equation, we were on a good path (previously) and feel pretty good once this is all over that we can get back on that path.”

Parent company Liberty Media is in a unique position in that it owns six of the Braves’ seven minor league affiliates in the (AAA), Braves (AA), (A), Danville Braves, GCL Braves (rookie league) and the Dominican Summer League.

The Fire Frogs, the Braves’ High-A affiliate, are owned by David Freeman. After Freeman agreed last year to terminate its lease agreement at Osceola County Stadium, a temporarily solution was put in place for the team to play this season at the Braves’ spring training facility, CoolToday Park, in North Port, Fla. But with no set home for 2021 and its player development agreement with the Braves expiring at the end of the season, it makes the Frogs more vulnerable to be cut.

“It helps that they are a Braves affiliate and are able to play in their spring training stadium for the summer,” Lantz added. “The ownership issue there, moving the team around and all that, is not ideal. It definitely puts them in a unique spot but it’s hard to say what will happen at this point.”