By Andy McCullough, Patrick Mooney and Tyler Kepner
Any executive in Major League Baseball will tell you that no one individual deserves all the credit for the success of a franchise. A front office features dozens of employees with differing, conflicting tasks. There are scouts and analysts and player-development gurus. There are resources devoted to the acquisition of players, the improvement of players, the health of players. These are elaborate ecosystems that can be challenging to maintain.
With the 2024 MLB season underway, The Athletic canvassed 40 executives across the sport to examine the question of which front office is the best in baseball. Many had experience as the primary decision-maker for a team, either in the past or the present. We asked each executive to rank the top five front offices in baseball and assigned a point value to each position — 10 points for first place, seven points for second place, five points for third, three points for fourth and one point for fifth.
Check out what executives around the league had to say about the Atlanta Braves:
No. 3 — Atlanta Braves
Total points: 130
First-place votes: 3
President of baseball operations:
Alex Anthopoulos
Alex Anthopoulos likes to refer to his two years with the Dodgers in 2016 and 2017 as a form of baseball graduate school. He had been a successful executive with the Toronto Blue Jays, ending the franchise’s 21-year postseason drought in 2015 before walking away from the gig that winter. He had always been, as one executive put it, “very aggressive” in his willingness to deal. When he took over the Braves heading in 2018, he married that quality with wisdom gleaned from his previous stops.
“Alex Anthopoulos does a tremendous job,” one executive said. “There’s nobody more engaged, open and honest about things. He’s had stops along the way and he’s adapted and learned over time.”
He has built something of a juggernaut in Atlanta through a series of canny trades and swift contract extensions for cornerstones like Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Matt Olson and Sean Murphy. After winning the World Series in 2021, Anthopoulos pivoted out of talks with first baseman Freddie Freeman and swung a trade for Olson. The maneuver stunned the industry but further demonstrated Anthopoulos’ decisiveness.
“Alex Anthopoulos knows what he wants and moves quickly in the offseason,” one executive said.
Some executives raised questions about whether the team will continue to draft well now that former scouting director Dana Brown has left to run the Astros. The good news for the Braves: With all those long-term extensions, the roster won’t require much mending for a while.
Check out the full ranking here:
GO DEEPER
What are the Top 10 front offices in MLB? Here’s how 40 executives voted
(Photo of Alex Anthopoulos: Matthew Grimes Jr. / Atlanta Braves / Getty Images)
