An aggressive reshaping of the Braves front office continues with the return of longtime former scouting chief Roy Clark and the promotion of highly regarded scout Brian Bridges to scouting director.
The Braves haven’t announced the moves yet because major league baseball asks teams not to make news during the playoffs without its approval and on its schedule.
Eight days after the the Braves’ disappointing season ended and two weeks after the firings of general manager Frank Wren, assistant general manager Bruce Manno and Jeff Wren as special assistant to the GM, the Braves have hired a new special assistant (venerable former Mariners and Yankees scout Gordon Blakeley), named a new scouting director, and brought back Clark, who could have a special assistant’s title.
The flurry of front-office moves increases speculation that a new Braves GM is already in-house, and that either interim GM John Hart is going to remove the “interim” from his title or serve as a mentor as they groom assistant GM John Coppolella for the post.
The Braves announced Friday that Fredi Gonzalez would return as manager, although three of his coaches have been dismissed or stepped down before being shown the door. Former Astros manager Bo Porter was hired as third-base coach to replace Doug Dascenzo, who was dismissed. The Braves haven’t replaced hitting coach Greg Walker, who stepped down, or assistant hitting coach Scott Fletcher, who was dismissed.
Bridges has scouted for the Braves since 2007, first as their main man mining the rich talent vein in the state of Georgia — he replaced Al Goetz, who had been hugely successful in the role — and later as the Braves’ Southeast crosschecker, in charge of scouting in the region. He’s had a hand in many of the Braves’ recent top draft choices, including Craig Kimbrel, Jason Heyward, Alex Wood and Mike Minor.
A native of north Florida, Bridges was a collegiate catcher at Florida Southern in the mid-1990s and began his scouting career with the Angels in 2000.
Though it appears Clark will return as a special assistant, there have been some reports that he would head up player development. Those are duties that Manno took on in September 2011, after Kurt Kemp stepped down from the position and the Braves didn’t hire anyone to replace him.
The Dodgers hired Clark away from the Nationals just 11 months ago, a feather in the cap of Dodgers president Stan Kasten, the former Braves and Nationals president.
Kasten had watched Clark play integral roles in building strong minor league systems with both of those teams and envisioned similar results in Los Angeles, to help the Dodgers eventually build their major league team with plenty of homegrown talent and not just free agents and trades.
Clark, 56, spent more than two decades with the Braves including 11 years as scouting director before the Nationals and Kasten hired him away in October 2009. Kasten did so with an offer to be assistant general manager and vice president of player personnel, after Clark had turned down Kasten’s overtures three years before.
With the Braves, Clark helped draft a raft of future All-Stars that includes Kimbrel, Freddie Freeman and Jason Heyward, along with the likes of former Braves Brian McCann, Jeff Francouer, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Adam Wainwright, a Georgia native and Braves prospect when he was traded to the Cardinals.
During Clark’s years with the Braves, they were named Baseball America’s Organization of the Year three times.
Clark was credited by Washington GM Mike Rizzo for playing an integral role in the Nationals upgrading their minor league talent base before Clark went west to rejoin Kasten in Los Angeles less than a year ago.
The Dodgers hired Clark as a national scouting cross-checker, an advisor to scouting director Logan White. But it was expected that Clark would have a bigger role than a traditional crosschecker, and would actually work with White to make final decisions on Dodgers’ draft picks rather than just make suggestions to White.
When the Dodgers announced his hiring less than 11 months ago at the major league owners’ meetings in Orlando, Kasten said, “Roy is an extraordinary talent and has two decades of experience with two great scouting and player-development organizations in Atlanta and Washington. The list of guys he’s been a part of drafting includes not only major leaguers but all-stars. It’s a huge in a shot in the arm for a team that looks to become scouting- and player-development based.”
Clark was first hired as an area scout in 1989 by legendary Braves scouting guru Paul Snyder. Clark also served as a scouting supervisor before becoming scouting director, where he ran June drafts for the Braves for a decade.
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