Frank Wren Discusses Recruiting B.J. Upton

Thursday, it was reported that free agent outfielder B.J. Upton had visited Turner Field and met with the Braves front office. Sunday, Braves GM Frank Wren talked with Jim Bowden and Jim Duquette on MLB Network radio about Upton’s visit and even briefly addressed Josh Hamilton. Here is the link to the interview with an excerpt below.

"We spent the better part of six hours on Thursday with B.J. and his representative Larry Reynolds. It was really an opportunity for all of us to get to know each other and we started off with down on the field, you know, literally we walked down on the field and it was a beautiful 60-degree day in Atlanta and just looked at the dimensions; we talked about how the ball carried, I mean, all things you may or may not know if you’re coming in to visit. We walked through the whole clubhouse environment whether it was the player lounge or the food room, all the training facilities, the weightlifting facilities, the video room, the coach’s room, where we do our advanced meetings, and then the clubhouse proper, and you try to introduce them to as many people as possible.

We were fortunate that day that [hitting coach] Greg Walker could come up from Douglas, Georgia and sit down and kinda give B.J. a sense of his philosophies on hitting and coaching hitting. Fredi Gonzalez was there to talk, so he got a sense of what his manager’s personality is like, and we were also very fortunate that Bobby Cox was in town and Bobby was there. Bobby had a chance to sit and tell stories and relay some of his thoughts about Atlanta and the like, and then we went up to the offices and we sat in the office and talked a little bit more about organizational philosophy and also giving him a snapshot of what our system looks like and the young players and the guys he’s going to be surrounded with if he’s an Atlanta Brave."

We'll see what develops in the coming days.