Best/Worst of Schuerholz Era

I'm not sure if many people saw this along with the Dave O'Brien article over at the Atlanta Journal Constitution regarding Schuerholz giving up his general manager duties. They basically came up with the top 5 best trades/signings along with the worst 5 during John's 17 years as the Braves GM. Just interesting in my opinion.

I know we all have our own ideas of what some of the greatest and not-so-great moves that Schuerholz has made over the years. Here's just my own two cents:

Granted, he's only played two months in a Braves uniform, and it will be several years before we can truly gauge the impact of the five prospects we traded to the Rangers, but my initial feelings are that the Mark Teixeira trade will eventually go down as one of Schuerholz's top five acquisitions...IF, and it's a big IF, they somehow manage to sign The Sheriff to a multi-year contract extension! What Teixiera did in the 54 games with Atlanta was downright epic. The fact that we didn't make the playoffs should not be placed on his shoulders, because the man did everything he could to push this team to the postseason, short of a pitching miracle.

I would also consider the Gary Sheffield and Edgar Renteria trades examples of awesome moves where the Braves got the better end of the deal. The Tim Hudson swap looks better and better every year. Even though he was under tight financial restraints, getting Johnny Estrada for Kevin Millwood was a decent attempt to save face in a horrible situation. We got Russ Ortiz for fairly cheap, and he gave us a good year and a half before falling apart.

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but sending Jason Schmidt to Pittsburgh for Denny Neagle wasn't the best long term deal. Sure, Neagle had some success in Atlanta, but Schmidt was pretty dominant for a half dozen years bewteen the Pirates and Giants.

In addition, I don't think criticizing the trade for J.D. Drew is fair. He was the perfect one year rental until Frenchy was ready to take over in right field. Drew played in 145 games and hit .305 with 31 HRs, 93 RBIs, and 118 runs scored. All Star stats, if you ask me. Yes, he left for more money, and yes, Wainwright turned into a decent pitcher, but I certainly wouldn't classify that as a bad move by any means.