The longest serving General Manager in baseball is no more. The former GM is now the Braves’ Team President according to Braves beat reporter Mark Bowman. Longtime assistant Frank Wren assumes the GM responsibilities. Both signed 4-year contracts, meaning that Schuerholz will be with the Braves into the next decade if all works out.

Schuerholz had been GM for about 17 years. That’s a long time. This offseason will be an interesting one for the Braves, more so now than in the past.  I have two questions though:

First:

Will Frank Wren want to make a huge splash to make his mark? I think if Liberty Media increases the payroll now it will be greatly unfair to Schuerholz who had to manoeuvre the payroll every year for the last few years.

Second:

How long has this been in the works? Was it Schuerholz’s decision to come out and talk about the Andruw Jones situation in order to leave a clean slate for Wren? If so, then that’s a classy thing to do. Schuerholz was the one who oversaw (is that a word?) Andruw’s career thus far, and to let Wren be the one to say they weren’t resigning Andruw would have caused fans to question Wren’s plan.

Let’s see what happens in the next four years.