Braves promote John Coppolella, giving us yet another baseball GM under 40

New Braves GM John Coppolella (AP) The Atlanta Braves didn’t shock too many people by naming John Coppolella as their general manager Thursday. Coppolella has been the team’s assistant GM since 2012 and has taken on many of the general manager’s duties since the Braves fired Frank Wren last September.

What’s a little more surprising is that Coppolella is now the fourth MLB GM hired in the past two weeks and he’s third one under 40. Yes, the MLB GM youth movement is in full swing. Coppolella is 37 and also represents a few other GM trends out there today: he’s not as ex-MLB player and he’s well educated, having earned a degree from Notre Dame.

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In the past two weeks, the Milwaukee Brewers made 30-year-old David Stearns their GM and the Boston Red Sox named 39-year-old Mike Hazen to the position. They’re both Ivy Leaguers (Hazen went to Princeton and Stearns to Harvard). Like Hazen’s situation in Boston, where former Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski is his boss, Coppolella serves under John Hart, a seasoned baseball exec with two GMs stints under his belt.

Coppolella has another interesting wrinkle to his story. He was set to take a $90,000 per year full-time job at Intel upon graduation from Notre Dame, but gave that up when the New York Yankees offered him an internship in their front office that would pay $18,000. He picked baseball and hasn’t locked back, getting a full-time job with the Braves in 2006 and now working his way up to GM.

In total, there are eight MLB GMs under the age of 40 with Stearns being the youngest. Jon Daniels, the Texas Rangers GM who graduated from Cornell, was 28 when he was hired, making him the youngest GM in baseball history. Even though he’s been in the job for 10 years, he’s still in the under-40 club too. Here’s the full list:

• David Stearns, Milwaukee Brewers, 30
• A.J. Preller, San Diego Padres, 37
• Farhan Zaidi, Los Angeles Dodgers, 37
• John Coppolella, Atlanta Braves, 37
• Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers, 38
• Jeff Bridich, Colorado Rockies, 38
• Mike Hazen, Boston Red Sox, 38
• Matthew Silverman, Tampa Bay Rays, 39

[Watch: Jose Ramirez’s home-run celebration makes Twins furious.]

There are still three GMs jobs yet to be filled, with the Phillies and Angels carrying interims GMs to the end of the season and Marlins under the watch of assistant GM Mike Berger. It sure seems like the trend is obvious: Baseball teams are looking for smart, young and driven executives who could just as easily succeed in the business sector.

We’ll have to see if that continues in Miami, Philadelphia or Anaheim.

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