From Atlanta Braves General Manager Frank Wren on the eve of the GM meetings:
Wren reiterated that the Braves are reluctant to trade young pitchers or top prospects, regardless of position.
"We're hesitant to trade from our base, which we think is getting stronger all the time," he said. "That's what is going to sustain us for a long time, and we need to be mindful of that."
This may be where Wren begins to distinguish himself from Jon Schuerholz as a General Manager. Schuerholz did not hesitate to trade away top prospects. In the span of a year he dealt away his three top pitching prospects in Jose Capellan, Dan Meyer, and Adam Wainwright. Schuerholz unloaded the entire top prospect list on the Rangers for Mark Teixeira, and easily parted with top prospects like Andy Marte, even though on many occasions those prospects never amounted to much.
Wren has been much less cavalier with the Braves farm system, using only second and third-tier prospects in trades, while actually targeting other teams' prospects when making trades (Jair Jurrjens, Gorkys Hernandez, Arodys Vizcaino, Tim Collins), something Jon Schuerholz rarely, if ever, did with any success. The most notable prospect Wren has traded to date is likely Tyler Flowers, but acquiring Arodys Vizcaino a year later for the same guy that Flowers was traded for greatly eases that hit to the farm system.
While I like holding on to our top prospects, I'm also worried that we're possibly passing up the opportunity to get an impact player that could be the difference in another pennant run or in the playoffs. Schuerholz' style seemed to be postseason as all costs, while Wren seems to prefer being a bit more crafty and less obvious with the machinations of his roster construction. Schu's style can't be discounted because it continually produced playoff teams. Wren's style seems to be more the long con, rather than a quick fix. Waiting around for prospects to develop year after year can cause some windows of opportunity to close, but if the stars do align they would likely do so with much more success than the quick fix rosters of the last few years of the Schuerholtz regime. Or at least we hope they will...