Atlanta Braves Do Know How To Build For The Future – Cobb Courier

By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College Every Spring, I write a column after reading the Major League Baseball assessment of a team’s farm system. Other columnists with sports publication usually rank the Atlanta Braves dead last, or close to the bottom of the barrell. And yet every year, the “Cream of Cobb County” seems to rise to the top, as Atlanta’s baseball team produces either a Rookie of the Year winner, or a top-three candidate. Perhaps after Catcher Drake Baldwin’s award, the critics will give the Braves a second look. In the book/movie “Moneyball,” Billy Beane and his baseball staff build winners for the low-budget team, the Oakland Athletics. Beane and his associates go beyond what the scouts are focusing on, which is looks and myths. For example, these traditionalists get into a player’s muscles and physique as marks of “future success.” Another claims to focus on a player’s wife. If she’s hot, it shows the player has confidence, and so he should be signed, or so the myth goes. By the way, a college football coach said that what he learned from “Moneyball” was to hire assistants with hot wives, because it showed they had
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