There was a time Alex Anthopoulos tried to maintain a low profile when he arrived back in Toronto with the L.A. Dodgers to play the Blue Jays over fears the presence of a former general manager would cause too much of an uproar.
Now it’s his Atlanta Braves that are the cause of all the commotion, and that suits the National League club’s newly minted general manager just fine.
The Montreal-born Anthopoulos is back on top of the baseball world after getting hired over the off-season to try to regenerate a moribund and scandal-scarred Braves outfit that could not win for losing.
It seemed the Braves were always a year away from being a year away and even Anthopoulos, before the season started, stated that he felt 2019 would be the campaign in which the Braves started to finally percolate.
The ex-Blue Jays GM was off by about a year with the Braves arriving in Toronto on Tuesday for a two-game tango with Toronto the surprise front-runners in the N.L. East.
“You know what, we didn’t know what to expect,” Anthopoulos said during an interview in the Atlanta dugout prior to Tuesday’s game. He was speaking about the Braves chances heading into the 2018 season.
“We knew there was a lot of talent here,” he continued, heaping praise on the previous management team that existed in Atlanta before he took over. “There’s a ton of talent here. Those guys deserve all the credit.”
Anthopoulos said part of the game plan was to see just how far the likes of Freddie Freeman and Nick Markakis could take this club.
Obviously pretty far, especially with Freeman continuing to play like an all-world first baseman, by far the leading vote-getter among fans so far for the coming All-Star Game in Washington.
Freeman headed into Tuesday’s game with a .337 batting average, second only in the N.L. to Matt Kemp’s .338 mark.
He ranked second in the league with 91 hits, one off the lead held by Markakis. The duo is on pace to become the first Braves pair ever to tally 200 hits in the same season.
“The plan was just to sit back and let these guys play – maybe add some things, bring some information,” Anthopoulos said. “We had a game plan in the off-season on what we could be doing from a developmental standpoint, how we could potentially make guys better with information that we might provide to them, to the staff, to try to get the most out of their abilities.”
It seemed that Anthopoulos was set for life back in 2015 when he was GM of the Blue Jays that won the American League East, vaulting the Canadian outfit back into the postseason for the first time since 1993.
But with the arrival of a new sheriff in town in team president Mark Shapiro, replacing Anthopoulos’s old sidekick Paul Beeston, Anthopoulos felt the sudden need to also move on despite the lure of a lucrative contract extension.
After thinking about a job offer in the front office of the Houston Astros, Anthopoulos opted instead for Los Angeles as an assistant GM, beginning for the 2016 season. He saw his team come within a victory of winning the World Series against the Houston Astros last year.
Meanwhile, things in Atlanta were crumbling fast.
Having restocked its minor-league system with prized prospects thanks to three consecutive seasons in which they lost 90 games or more, the Braves were rocked by an international scouting scandal that first surfaced in 2017.
The matter cost Atlanta GM John Coppolella his job and he was later banned for life from the game by MLB. Suddenly, the Braves were in need of a new lead baseball executive. Anthopoulos applied for the job during the World Series and was hired shortly after it ended.
Anthopoulos said the two years he was out of the GM’s hot seat was good for his career.
“I think going to L.A. − and it was deciding between the Astros and L.A. − and it worked out,” he said. “I didn’t get the [World Series] ring, but both places were going to achieve what I wanted to achieve – going to a place where I could get exposed to some new things and grow and get better.
“So I think a lot of things I learned here [in Toronto], I tried to bring a little bit to Atlanta. And things I learned in L.A. I tried to bring a little bit and take a lot of the good that Atlanta already had and keep it going.”
As far as returning to Toronto as a member of the opposition, Anthopoulos said it is great to be back. And it is obviously sweeter when your club is in first place.