Associated Braves Journal Press
–Phoenix
Phoenix Police arrested Atlanta Braves General Manager Frank Wren on theft charges. Â The charges stem from an incident this past winter when Wren allegedly stole Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Justin Upton.
Wren is being represented by Dewey, Cheatham and Howe,  who gave  Associated Braves Journal Press the following statement:
The charges against our client are categorically false.  (Giggle, Giggle) He left Martin Prado and Randall Delgado in Upton’s place! (more muffled giggling)
In a related manner, police have also called in Prado and Delgado for questioning. At this time a PPD is maintaining the stance that Prado and Delgado are not being charged at this time, but are potential accomplices of Wren’s.
 Upton was seen last night in the Phoenix area. Eyewitnesses claim they saw Upton have four hits, including a massive homerun.
The witnesses claim Upton was not acting alone. An alleged gang of individuals, identifiable by their blue shirts, also ran wild in the Phoenix  area last night. The a few of the suspects identified include a Brian McCann and a Mike Minor. McCann is alleged to have also hit a home run while Minor ran interference for six and two-thirds innings.
There were also witnesses who claimed Chris Johnson, who went missing around the same time Upton was allegedly stolen, had three hits with a home run.
Wren is scheduled to have a bond hearing this morning. Experts believe that his bond will be three hotdogs and a Hank Aaron baseball in return for the Grand Canyon. Â
Mac would be proud.
Oh my! Genius!
Perfect Smitty!
Almost as good as last night’s game. 🙂
Out-Freakin’-Standing!
First impressing….. Oh SH&*^(T. then realization, relief and laughter.
There was a time the emotions and order would have been different. Well done Smitty, weller done Frank Wren.
Ha! This would definitely hold up as “Putative Humor” as well as being a recap.
Perfect recap!
Just watch the replay, that throw from BJ was completely effortless…and he threw a strike to McCann…scary…
Just like how JS stole McGriff, all Wren needs to do now is to sign a Maddux to complete his legacy.
Reading Braves Journal this morning began with a panic, then relaxed into a big, satisfied smile. Hilarious!
Wonderful, Smitty.
I just found out that the postgame quotes are hidden behind AJC’s asinine paywall. Ugh.
Yeah, I know, it’s Twitter, but I enjoyed some classic Diamondbacks butthurt tweets last night, especially ones egged on by Keith Law.
“YOU WOULDN’T HAVE HAD JUSTIN UPTON HR UPDATES LAST YEAR!” No, I guess not, but we do this year! Shame you got rid of him and all.
Brilliant! and funny. Thomason quality humor, Smitty, IMHO, the highest complement.
Is Minor our ace?
Thanks!
@14
I agree. That is about the higest of all accolades
@14 Yes, Mike is definitely our Ace.
@13, other gems from klaw’s twitter last night – a little something for everybody.
“No, Justin, we said ‘more grit,’ not ‘four hits.'”
What does Gattis have to do with great prospects? RT @jbrein44: who’s the next great prospect coming up in the Atlanta after Gattis?
Bravo.
Does it make me a bad person that I’ve watched the clip of Bryce Harper running into the wall about a dozen times now? I think it does. I’m ok with that.
I wonder what’ll happen when J-hey returns this weekend? I’d be willing to bet it’d be one of these 4…
1. Laird is traded
2. 6-man bullpen
3. R. Johnson is traded
4. Send Gattis to the Minors
Anything I’m missing? The likely scenario is a 6-man bullpen with Carpenter going down, but the other 6 guys aren’t interchangeable so that decision makes future decisions fairly complicated. My preferred decision would be to trade one of Reed or Laird.
@14 No, the Braves do not have an Ace. I say this as someone who defines ‘Ace’ as a certain level of pitching excellence, not just the best pitcher on a team.
Minor is the best starter on the Braves right now.
@20
I’ll go with Reed Johnson released.
@19, it isn’t quite as awful as the Aaron Rowand one. But yeah — Harper needs to develop a Spidey sense PDQ, or he’s going to cut off his future at the knees.
@20 and @22, I agree — I’d put my money on either Reed Johnson released, or David Carpenter to the minors.
I don’t think Laird has any trade value above a bag of balls.
Fun fact – Reed Johnson is the oldest position player on the team, and 2nd oldest overall behind Hudson, and are the only two on the active roster over 35.
@20
I’d go with #1 if that was a possibility, but I don’t know what kind of market there is for a backup catcher with a 2-year deal.
If Laird sticks, then I don’t mind keeping Gattis because of the oft-mentioned virtue of being able to use him as a pinch hitter.
Outstanding recap!
I think they’ll DL someone with an imaginary ailment before the end of the week.
I think Laird may have some value, but they won’t move him.
@24, Yankees and Baltimore need catching depth.
I bet they put BJ on DL.
I don’t think either Laird or Reed Johnson has any trade value — they are the definition of freely available talent.
I was thinking that Laird could be a Yankee, too. Y’never know when Francisco Cervelli (with his newfound power & his name on a certain South Florida client list) could be serving a drug suspension.
Here’s a wonderful NY Times piece about the genuine misery of Cleveland sports fandom:
http://tinyurl.com/cndldol
Given that they just moved Cervelli to the 60 day DL, they are down to Chris Young and Austin Romine for the the next 6 weeks or so, at best.
If the Yankees will pick up Laird’s deal for a sack of baseballs, I think you have to do it.
Can laird be traded?
@12 – I’ll be the first to admit I know nothing about running a newspaper in 2013, but I so don’t understand local papers going behind paywalls. The Courier-Journal (in Louisville) did that recently, and almost immediately lost their two biggest-name sportswriters (and probably two of the highest drivers of traffic), who jumped ship to write for the website of the local Fox TV Affiliate, where they now also do some on-air stuff. Being out of town, after they did that, I just stopped checking the Courier entirely and now read the Fox affiliate’s website (which is free, and the freedom they now have has actually greatly improved the quality of their writing) regularly, far more than I ever would have before (never). I wish papers would actually put effort into having Not-Amazingly-Crappy websites before they start charging folks to access their Amazingly-Crappy Websites. Okay, sorry for ranting.
Sure will be nice when Beachy is back. He’s finally getting close.
@35, I think the rule is a player signed to a multi year deal can elect free agency if traded in the first year, to prevent “sign and trade” deals.
@36, the AJC has never been a particularly interesting newspaper – I can’t imagine many folks paying for their stable of proprietary columnists, and you can get everything else from alternative sources. I can’t imagine this experiment lasting long, but what do I know?
The Braves will really be rubbing salt in the Diamonbacks’ wounds if Teheran pitches a great game tonight. We got Upton and CJ and somehow kept Julio. That is hard to fathom.
@36, there are basically two reasons that newspapers go behind paywalls.
1) They want to make money off the readers who are currently reading them for free. There’s a conversion factor — I don’t know what it is, but the basic idea is, if you start with X readers, then you’ll get some fraction of X ponying up to subscribe. Obviously, the rest won’t, and you don’t want to entirely lose them because that will hurt your advertising pageviews, so that’s why newspapers often give you a certain number of free articles per month — they want to keep your pageviews, but if you’re a hardcore reader rather than a casual reader, they want you to pay.
2, and often more importantly) They want to push people back to the print newspaper. If you live in an area, and the website’s no longer free, and they offer you a good deal to subscribe to the 7-day-a-week paper, or even just the Sunday edition, you’re a lot more likely to do it. That bolsters their print circulation numbers, and helps to stem the losses in print circulation and print advertising that every newspaper has suffered in recent years.
I think 1) is more of a long-term strategy and 2) is more of a short-term strategy, but when you’re hemorrhaging money and facing an existential threat, you’ll do anything you can to stanch the bleeding.
Remember when the AJC wanted us to pay to read Terrance Moore?
@36
Alex is right. It is all about sell ads. You can sell more adds in print than on line.
I watched the game last night but missed BJ’s throw to home plate. I just caught the video at MLB.com. What a thing of beauty, and great camerawork, too. Those kinds of athletic displays are what make baseball such a privilege to behold when it’s being done well.
I think only the Wall Street Journal has successfully managed to erect a working pay wall, and they never offered the content for free even in the beginning.
You can read the AJC headlines and learn about 90% of what you need.
Another murder, fire, arrest, car wreck, corrupt politician (your choice).
BTW, Fredi passed Chuck Tanner on the Atlanta games managed list last night with 362.
That puts him in 4th place on the list behind, Cox, Luman Harris and Joe Torre.
He’s 18th on the Braves all-time list with a bunch of Boston managers before reaching Torre.
Don’t get me wrong, 10 runs with all of those HRs was great. But the way the Braves played defense last night was my favorite part. Two runners thrown out at the plate, a caught stealing, Simmon’s making a tough play look INSANELY easy on that grounder to his right side…. And of course Minor giving up the first inning HR but buckling down, stranding runners, and getting into the 7th despite throwing a billion pitches in the first few innings. It might’ve been the best game this team has played all year.
There were lot of things that encapsulated why the Braves will succeed or fail this year. If we play games similar to how we did yesterday, we’ll be just fine. I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but we’ve been averaging over 9 K’s a game, but we only had 4 by the time we scored our 8th run. There’s a balance between “small ball” and “Earl Weaver ball” and the Braves have to find that balance, which they did last night. Add to that the great defense, timely hitting, and great starting pitching and the Braves are in great shape.
@45, the WSJ was able to sustain a paywall from the beginning, but that made it an anomaly — many other newspapers tried paywalls at the beginning and simply couldn’t sustain them because so few individuals were online in the mid-’90s. The Wall Street Journal was in a good position because it sold business news and many of its customers were businesses — a general news newspaper like the Atlanta Constitution had a much harder time trying to get Atlantans to subscribe to the paper online.
(I actually wrote about the AJC’s early Access Atlanta service. It’s an interesting story.)
Bloomberg News has imploded lately by spying on its clients. Bad business decision.
Also, @45, the Financial Times has had a successful paywall — so successful, in fact, that it was the model for the paywall that The New York Times implemented a couple of years ago, which has also worked quite well for The Times.
Brilliant recap. Well done, Smitty!
Great recap. And the theft itself is an object lesson in why you don’t sell low on a premium talent who’s battled injuries. I’m looking at you, Team Trade Heyward from a couple threads ago.
@52 – great point.
Trading Heyward right now is crazy, but a few years down the road it’s certainly an option if he doesn’t want to extend.
Game thread is up.
@50 I don’t think I’d say their paywall has been successful. Their ad revenues are dropping and now they are working on other types of subscriptions to make up for it.