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Frank "Trader" Lane

The Braves: Turner crafts a turner-around

I was just reading an article in a 1967 issue of Baseball Digest. It listed what the author considered to be the worst baseball trades of all time. Typical of most fan analyses of trades, this simply looked at the who-for-who and what happened that year. As a result, several monumentally bad trades involving The Tribe and The Braves (Colavito for Kuenn and Pizarro/Jay for McMillan) were overlooked. Why? Because Colavito/Kuenn appeared to be even steven on the surface. Never mind that it wrecked the franchise for years and was just one of many poor deals cut by Frank "Trader" Lane. Same with Pizarro+Jay=McMillan. Not horrible that year on the surface, but over time, a killer, and just one of many ill-advised moves by the Braves bosses.

And there was this: Because the Braves had been so anonymous for so long, no one really paid them much attention. In their Boston years, they were so far eclipsed by the Red Sox that they were virtually invisible. A move to Milwaukee, then a minor league town somewhere in the Upper Midwest, didn't help. The move to Atlanta was similar, in that the Braves were the first franchise to go deep South, not on the sports writer/fan radar.

Then, in 1976, Ted Turner bought them.

Now, if you recall, Turner only bought them because he'd purchased a TV network and had no content. The Braves desperately needed the money. Deal made in heaven. Soon, anyone who cared to watch a completely pathetic baseball team could do so any day of the week. Since the Braves did play good teams from time to time, they began to get some recognition over the years.

Not that there was much to recognize. The pre-Turner bosses had continued to make astoundingly poor trades, including the afore-mentioned 68 trade of Joe Torre for The Baby Bull, and the even worse trade of Felix Millan after the 72 season for Gary Gentry and Danny Frisella.

Fun fact time: You thought Felix was a funny name, right? Felix the Cat. Felix from The Odd Couple. Well, 17 major league ballplayers have had Felix as a first or last name. (You could look it up.) But the Braves, in their mishandling of their two Felixes (Feli?) (Millan and Mantilla), lead the league in misjudging athletes named Felix.

By the time Turner took over, this was a last-place team that deserved to be last. The Braves 1977 rosters has to be one of the poorest ever assembled. The pitching staff was so bad that 38-year-old Phil Niekro had to pitch 330 innings, finishing with a 16-20 W-L record and an ERA over 4.00. No regular hit over .300 and the only player to lead the league in anything was Niekro--in IP and losses.

As Turner exploited the team for various promotions and gimmicks, it floundered. There was one bright moment, when, in 1982, Joe Torre returned--as manager. Why he would want to help out the Braves is still a mystery. I guess it was as good a place to start over as any. (He'd just been dumped by the Mets.) In any case, he lashed it into a division crown. Torre's leadership provided a brief relief from incompetence; the team finished second in 83 and 84. But then Torre left, and mediocrity returned (under managers Chuck Tanner and Russ Nixon) until ...

Bobby Cox returned. Cox, a marginal major leaguer himself, had cut his big league managing teeth with the horrible Braves teams of 1978-81. Cox moved on to the Blue Jays, where he took over a struggling squad and, in two years, completely turned it around. After guiding the Jays to a pennant in 1985, the Braves lured him back. It only took Cox one season to whip the Braves into shape. And the rest has been history.

Ironically, the Braves and Indians would meet in the 1995 World Series, two franchises that, after 30-plus years of frustration, rose to prove that good management can recognize and retain top talent, regardless of the market size or the franchise's history. Today, Cleveland and Atlanta are the envy of many a franchise, as they carefully husband their talent to stay competitive year after year. Too bad the fans of Milwaukee couldn't have been part of this turnaround. There's no reason they couldn't have enjoyed it. Except that the Braves' bosses, from 1960 to 1990, were stupid, unlucky, and probably prejudiced--at least against Hispanic guys named Felix.

The Horror! The Horror! Braves episode 3

We're discussing how disastrous player personnel decisions by the Boston/ Milwaukee/ Atlanta Braves beginning in 1960 sent the team into a 30-year tailspin, eerily similar to that suffered by the Cleveland Indians at the very same time.

You'll have to read the last couple of posts for the details, but essentially, here's what happened: The Braves freaked out after the team finished second in 1959 and 1960. They made stupid, panic-driven trades that robbed the team of top-quality veterans and about-to-blossom young players. They made poor decisions about playing time for key players, especially Joe Adcock and Felix Mantilla. The farm system, which had been doing well for a decade, stopped, for the most part, producing talent to replace what was traded away. The players obtained in the trades for the most part were flops.

Following a series of fifth and sixth place finishes, the Braves moved the team to Atlanta, which had been their top minor league town. Poor Milwaukee attendance was cited as the reason, of course. But had the team stuck with the talent the gods of baseball had bestowed up it in the late 50s, the Braves certainly would have finished first and second at least twice in those four fateful years. (See yesterday's post for details.)

At first, it appeared the Braves had suddenly gotten smart. They obtained Felipe Alou, in the prime of his career, for virtually nothing from the Giants in 1964. The same year, the farm system actually popped out a rare star: Rico Carty. Young pitchers who were counted on to replace Joey Jay, Bob Buhl and Juan Pizarro, showed promise. (George Stone, Pat Jarvis and Ron Reed.) Lemaster and Cloninger were looking like studs on the mound. As the team relocated to Atlanta in 1966, things seemed to be looking up.

Note: They weren't.

After several seasons of disappointment, the Braves finally got a break. Divisional play began in 1969. Now there weren't so many teams to beat. The Atlanta fans must have thought they had really pulled a fast one on Beertown, as the Braves eaked out a first-place West division finish in '69.

It was a fluke. Oh yeah.

The entire staff of starting pitchers had career years. In some cases, it would be those hurlers' last decent year in the majors. Led by Phil Niekro's 23 wins, the Braves's four primary starters won 67 games among them. And they did it without a great bullpen. Meantime, the oft-injured Rico Carty hit .342. Felix Millan led the second sackers in fielding and hit well. Retreads Tony Gonzalez and Clete Boyer cobbled together solid seasons, while Tito Francona and Mike Lum came off the bench to provide late-inning heroics.

But the divisional playoffs offered a clearer insight into the Braves' future. The Mets clobbered them, scoring 27 runs in sweeping the five-game playoff 3-0. The Braves hit .255 compared to the Mets' .327, while Braves hurlers recorded an ERA of just under 7.

Ouch!

The very next year, the pitching staff imploded. The questionable 1969 trade of in-his-prime slugging catcher Joe Torre for fading star Orlando Cepeda began to stink to high heaven, as the Braves failed to identify a decent backstop. Boyer and Gonzalez declined as age took its toll. How desperate were the Braves? Desperate enough to pick up 47-year-old Hoyt Wilhelm to try to shore up the bullpen.

Joe Torre, by the way, hit ,325 with 21 HRs and 100 RBIs for St. Louis. He would rack up 8 solid years for the Cards and Mets before deciding to become one of the greatest managers in the history of the game. Cepeda did well in 1970 but fell off the face of the earth in 71 and was traded to Oakland for--are you ready?--DENNY MCLAIN!@!$# in 1972.

Fun facts for you Atlanta fans who are too young to remember the horror.

Tomorrow: the Braves wander in the desert for 20 years until a flambouyant billionaire who got to schtup Jane Fonda rescues them, and his own reputation into the bargain.

The Braves Were Stupid, Episode 2 (all new!)

I just got back from setting up a digital recording studio in Tom's basement. Who says two guys who are over 100 years old together can't figure this stuff out? (We pushed enough buttons until it worked, then grilled steaks to celebrate.) Listening to Kaleidoscope, courtesy of my bro Chris. Thanks, Bro. Yashigmadah indeed!

OK, back to our analysis of the collapse of the Braves. In yesterday's exciting episode, we had a bit of history lesson in the Boston/ Milwaukee/ Atlanta Braves. (For first-person insight into this era, see "My 15 Years with the Braves" by Ed Mathews in the August 1966 edition of Sport Magazine.) We left you hanging on the edge of the cliff: The Braves had won two pennants (57-58) and narrowly missed a 4-peat, finishing second in 59-60. And then ...

Just like The Tribe panicked when the team fell short in 1959, trading Colavito and destroying the team, the Braves freaked out after the 1960 season. Management embarked on a series of desperate trades designed to put them back on top. Instead, save for a completely inexplicable division title in 1969, the Braves would suffer through three decades of incompetence. The town of Milwaukee would be stripped of its beloved team, and an entire generation of fine players would never be permitted to sip of the championship Champagne.

Here are the key elements to the collapse:
1) 1960, Braves traded Juan Pizarro (one of two Hispanics on the club) and Joey Jay for Roy McMillan. Since those who executed the trades are dead, we can only surmise that they were convinced a good fielding, poor hitting,aging shortstop would put the Braves back in the thick of things. Joey Jay enjoyed TWO 21-win seasons with Cincinnati, leading them to the Series in 1961. He would win 75 games post-Braves before he retires. Juan Pizarro would play for 14 MORE seasons in the majors as a starter and reliever, winning more than 100 games. McMillan had 2-plus mediocre seasons and was soon out of the game. The Braves had an excellent shortstop on the team at the time--Felix Mantilla--but refused to start him and let him go the Mets in the '62 draft. Mantilla would have four outstanding seasons as the Braves entered their nosedive. Hispanic prejudice? Maybe. How else do you explain it? (I always loved his 1960 baseball card and still own it.)
2) 1960: Billy Bruton and Terry Fox are traded for Tigers second sacker Frank Bolling. Bruton has four more excellent years with the Tigers. Fox becomes the premier relief pitcher in the majors over the next 5 years as the Braves search for relief help. Bolling does OK, but again, Felix Mantilla could also play second. Why give up four outstanding regulars for two middling infielders, when you had a young stud infielder right on the roster? At least one of these trades was superfluous. STUPID!

(it gets worse)

3) As the Braves slump further, more trades follow. The team's one solid relief ace, Don McMahon, is sold. He enjoys 12 more years of slamming the door in close games. Meantime, Joe Adcock, so sorely abused as a platoon hitter by the Braves, is traded to Cleveland for--are you ready?--TY CLINE, DON DILLARD AND FRANK FUNK! Adcock will hit more than 60 homers in the next four years. Funk is gone from the game in one year, and Cline and Dillard shine the regulars shoes for a couple of years before opening a dry goods store in Crampton, AK. Gene Oliver plays first base for the Braves. Need we say more?

(seat belt time for Braves fans)

4) in 1961, the unforgivable happens: The Braves WAIVE Wes Covington! One of the finest left-handed hitting sluggers of his day or any day, The Cov was a hitting machine along the lines of Jerry Lynch, Claudell Washington and Ellis Valentine. And the Braves get NOTHING for him. Covington will rack up a slugging percentage of .450 in the next 4 years with 54 homers as a platoon player. Meantime, the Braves feature Mack Jones in his place. Who is basically Wes Covington once he gets in the groove by 1965. But by then, the Braves have blown four years when they could have been contending.

(we're not done yet. Barf bags suggested for Braves fans)

5)In a final insult to the senses, Lee Maye, another solid hitter and Aaron's new outfield counterpart, is traded during the 1965 season to Houston for Ken Johnson and Jim Beauchamp (one of those eternal prospects who never got it together). Of course, Johnson hangs in there for 3 years and retires, while Maye enjoys another 6 years in the show.

What does all this mean? Simply this: Braves management could not judge baseball talent. How could they? They did not see the talent they already had on the roster in 1960. Think about it: The club was loaded! This team in 1960 had pitching: McMahon in the bullpen, with Terry Fox coming up. Instead, these guys were dumped in favor of Ron Piche, Frank Funk, Billy frickin O'Dell, and (I'm not making this up), Bobby Tiefenauer.

Starters: Jay, Pizarro and Buhl were good for an average of 16 wins apiece in the 61-64 period when the Braves should have been contending. But those wins were for someone else.

Hitters and fielders: The bosses completely undervalued Bruton, Covington, Mantilla, Adcock and Lee Maye. Yet these riches were squandered in an ill-advised campaign to shuffle the deck and create a winner through trades.

This team should have been in first and second place every year from 1961 to 1964. Attendence in Milwaukee would have been through the roof. Instead, just as the Braves fled Boston for Milwaukee a decade earlier, management would blame the town and seek success in a new place. What Atlantans witnessed by 1968 was a Braves team that featured the likes of an aging Tito Francona, Milt Pappas (did he kill his wife or not? Should he be in the HOF or not??), Clete Boyer, Tommy Aaron and Mike Lum.

Would you pay to see this team?

Tomorrow: Atlanta inherits Milwaukee's suffering, enjoys a brief yee-Ha! in 1969, then watches as the team goes into the toilet for 21 years. Only this franchise could have made Ted Turner a respectable human being!

Yes, the Braves were that stupid

Growing up in the 50s and 60s as an Indians fan, I suppose I was too self-absorbed to realize that, in a land far to the northwest, another group of fans was suffering at the hands of the team's management. Now that I study it, the fate of the Milwaukee Braves was eerily similar to Cleveland's. The chief difference was that Cleveland's Tribe was disarticulated by one insane man, Frank "Trader" Lane. The Braves were ruined by a thoroughly stupid management staff that was completely clueless when it came to evaluating talent.
And they were unlucky.
And probably racist.
And, at some point, they got tired of tired old dirty, boring Milwaukee. But that's another story.
I like baseball stats. Always have. Even as a kid, I looked for new ways to interpret existing data. But what I love even more than stats are player personnel decisions. And that's what really killed the once-proud Milwaukee Braves.
This analysis is gonna take some time. Too much for one blog post, certainly.
So let's start with some basics.
1) After the development of the farm system, but before the era of free agency, baseball trades flourished. It was how many teams tried to build winners.
2) Today, free agent strategies have replaced most trades. These strategies are just as fascinating as trades used to be, but I don't want to talk about them on this blog.
3) In most cases, I believe, most teams in the trading era would have been better served by not trading players than by trading them. This is the non-trade trade. There are exceptions all over the place, but essentially, teams that traded a lot were run by people (Frank "Trader" Lane, for ex) who thought they were smarter than the next guy. Lane wasn't. The Yankees were smarter than the A's during this era. The Braves and Cubs were not smarter than anyone. (We won't go into the Cubs here, except to mention Brock for Broglio later on.)
4) You can't judge most trades by "Who they got for who." You have to follow the thread a little further--in most cases. But the Braves' trades were so bad that you really don't need to follow the thread, because it just gets worse as you follow it.

Basic premise of this treatise: The Milwaukee fans were robbed of their team by a management that made stupid trades beginning in 1959. The Braves could have continued to contend, and doubtless would have won at least one pennant, from 1961 through 1966, if they had done nothing at all besides use the considerable talent they had at the end of the 1959 season. The squandering of the in-house talent in that period caused the team to collapse, attendance to dwindle in the small Milwaukee market, and paved the way for the move to Atlanta.
At least Cleveland didn't lose its team during this era. Almost, but not quite. But Milwaukee fans lost not only what should have been an exciting contending team, they lost the whole franchise.

What I intend to do is demonstrate how the Braves team of 1948, just like the Cleveland team of 1948, was poised for greatness. But because the owners panicked a decade later, Milwaukee (and Cleveland) were destroyed from within.

Today, in Milwaukee Disaster Blog 1, we will start with some history.

1948: Spahn and Sain and pray for rain. Team wins the NL pennant, loses to Cleveland in WS, but nontheless is a fine squad. Scrappy guys like Eddie Stanky, Al Dark, Tommy Holmes and slugging Bob Elliott.
The team slumps, and by 1952, finishes 7th. But who's showing up in the lineup? Eddie Mathews, Johnny Logan, Lew Burdette. The future has arrived.
1953: Joe Adcock, Billy Bruton, Del Crandall and Bob Buhl arrive. WOW!
1954: The Home Run King appears: Hank Aaron. Gene Conley, all 6-foot-8 of him (also a pro basketball player) joins the pitching staff. This team is stoked. Moves up to 3rd place, then second in 55, second by one game in 56, and then, POW! Two consecutive pennants, including a world championship, in 57-58.

To understand the significance of this, you need to know that the NL was extremely competitive in those years. It was right before expansion, but right after the collapse of the Negro leagues. Hispanics were being signed left and right (but not by Milwaukee). There was a glut of talent on a small number of teams. And the Braves just snared two pennants in a row.

Consider who they had: Pitching: Spahn, Burdette, Joey Jay and Juan Pizarro, with Don frickin McMahon in the bullpen. Hitting: Mathews, Aaron, Bruton, Crandall (one of the top hitting catchers ever in his prime), and Wes Covington. A forgotten player today, but then, Cov was one of the most feared left-handed platoon hitters in the game. In 58, his slugging average was .622! And Joe Adcock, the George Scott of his day (think Hafner), was being PLATOONED with the singles hitter Frank Torre, even though Adcock had proven he could hit righties and lefties earlier in his career. With the outfield dominated by the fleet Bruton and the quick, lithe Aaron, the infield anchored by Johnny Logan and various good fielding second basemen, this was a solid team from top to bottom.

Then.... they finished second by TWO GAMES to the Dodgers in 59, and second again in 1960. SECOND!!!!!!!!!
Stay tuned and find out tomorrow just how stupid the Braves bosses would be....