John Coppolella to share GM duties with John Hart
After it was announced that John Hart will be President of Baseball Operations for the Atlanta Braves, people started to wonder about whether or not the team would hire a new general manager or simply let Hart run the team with a fancier title. As it turns out, it’s going to be a little bit of both, but the team currently has no plans of adding another person to the front office staff:
Hart will have many of the GM responsibilities with Coppolella as his right hand man. No plans to add other member to baseball ops staff
— Kevin McAlpin (@KevinMcAlpin) October 23, 2014
While the team has yet to make any new announcement about John Coppolella’s status with the team, it seems clear that he is taking another step up the ladder within the organization:
In otherwords, Hart and Coppolella will head baseball operations and no other personnel additions in the plans. No GM title for now. #Braves
— Grant McAuley (@grantmcauley) October 23, 2014
It will be interesting to see whether or not the Braves actually give Coppolella the GM title in the coming days and/or weeks, but his actual job probably won’t be changing. After helping Hart and Braves president John Schuerholz reassemble the Braves scouting department it is clear that the two have Coppolella in mind with the future of the organization — even if they don’t want to completely hand him the reigns just yet.
Whether or not that becomes a problem in the future remains to be seen, as Coppolella has long been a candidate for a GM position and could easily be approached by other organizations. It wouldn’t be crazy to see him jump ship for lone control of a front office, but for the time being it’s nice to know that Coppolella (who, if you couldn’t tell by now we are very fond of on this site) will taking on a larger role with the Atlanta Braves.