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May 16, 2005

Prospectus Q&A

John Schuerholz

by Jonah Keri

John Schuerholz has been the architect of World Champions in both Kansas City and Atlanta. Starting with the Royals in 1975, he claimed that team's general-manager job in 1981 and held it for a decade. He then shuttled to Atlanta, shepherding the Braves to division titles during every year of his tenure except 1994.

Schuerholz recently chatted with Baseball Prospectus about the transition from scout to general manager, the team's focus on drafting Georgia prep players, the importance of delegating, and more.

Baseball Prospectus: The Braves have become known for drafting a high number of players out of Georgia high schools. Why has the team gone this route, and what do you think it's done for the organization?

John Schuerholz: It's served as a great catalyst for energizing local amateur baseball programs, grassroots baseball programs. We then benefit from having more young baseball players gravitating toward the game because of our success.

The more subtle trend is the general trend in the United States of families moving toward the Sun Belt--something you started to see 12 to 15 years ago. If you look at the statistics of where new residents have migrated, the southeast states are among the highest, and Georgia is high on that list. Then you have kids looking at our success, how we have both local and national appeal because of our success, TBS and other factors...kids, as you know, want to do things that seem to be popular in their area.

The competition improves because there are so many kids playing. It's an opportunity for amateur programs to separate themselves as advanced, talent-wise. There are an awful lot of amateur select teams and travel team programs that make for great competition. The [Atlanta-area] East Cobb program stands out nationally. Kids that play in East Cobb ball are high-school students somewhere too. So you take that talent to the baseball community, and the high-school teams have gotten better at the same time. It's a great feeder system for the development of baseball athletes to either advanced amateur players, standout high-school players or college-caliber players--or elite pro prospects, which is what we're looking for. We've recognized that, and it's in our backyard, so we've made a conscious effort to take advantage of that, to spend a lot more time developing our relationships with Georgia amateur and high school programs.