John Hart!?

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski on September 24, 2014 at 12:04 AM

John Hart is apparently on the verge of coming back to baseball as a general manager for the first time since October 4, 2005. This time it would be for the Braves. It really has been that long since he invented some of the modern concepts of everyday general managing, and it really has been that long since he stepped down to let Mark Shapiro take over as GM in Cleveland.

Which, come to think of it, may be considered another move he pioneered, the grooming of the understudy, though Sandy Alderson had done the same thing, leaving to a position in MLB's offices, letting Billy Beane take over the top chair in Oakland. In any event, if Hart were to take the reins in Atlanta, it would apparently be with the idea that he would groom yet another successor, after Shapiro and Jon Daniels, this time John Coppolella, a young jack-of-all-trades type with both stats and scouting savvy and an incredible reputation as an up-and-comer within the game.

It has, just to hammer this home, been so long since Hart left Cleveland to Shapiro that Shapiro himself has already bumped upstairs to the President job (speaking of now-popular front-office moves), with Chris Antonetti taking over as GM. This was Antonetti's fourth season in that role.