A full retrospective will be forthcoming, and if others chime in to me personally I will add your thoughts here… in the meantime:
Brian Gerald Snitker is 5 months older than me. I retired 6 years ago after 35 years with the same organization, though I still have a consulting arrangement that keeps my mug on the company website. I was lucky enough to leave on my own terms and have never regretted for a second my decision. So I do have some sense of what 48 years in one organization is like. But I am more than willing to admit that a lot of my last two or three years was a slog. Getting old has a lot of virtues and a ton of problems;, when there comes a point when you decide that your departure is better for both you and the organization, that’s when it’s time to go. Maybe my company felt the same way but wanted me to come to my own decision, or maybe they just didn’t notice how much I’d lost from my fast ball….. economists don’t have nearly the sabermetric data we have on managers.
As befits a well-run organization, we’ll probably never know whether this was Snitker’s decision or not. But there’s clearly enough mutual respect there that we don’t need to know. Enjoy retirement, Snit.
Continue the discussion on new managers or anything else…..
Silly story. I grew up around Greenville, SC, where Snitker managed the AA Greenville Braves from 2002-2004 before their departure for the greener pastures of Pearl, Mississippi, in 2005. The Greenville Braves played in a charming but outdated stadium from the early 1980s and the City of Greenville couldn’t agree to terms with the Braves on a new stadium.
We had a friend who was a manager at a team sponsor and she left us tickets right above the third-base dugout whenever we wanted, so we spent many a summer night watching the likes of Mike Hessman, Howard Battle, and Joe Winkelsas.
In those days, the manager was also the third-base coach. Anyways, us being immature teenagers, we took a laser pointer to the stadium one night and, well, we had the laser on Snitker’s rear end, before security found us and told us to stop.
That’s my Snitker story. Enjoy retirement, Snit.
Vale, Snit. I’m not sure anyone would have had success with the caliber of injuries that have beset the team this season. And I wish you had gone out with a playoff-winning team, at least.
Say hi to Bobby for us the next time you see him.
The number of managers whose last game was in the playoffs is very small:
Dusty Baker Houston, 2023
Rick Renteria White Sox, 2020
John Farrell Red Sox, 2017
Bobby Cox Braves, 2010
Larry Dierker Houston, 2001
Fred Haney Braves, 1959 (if you count the Braves/Dodgers postseason playoff game)
Sandy Alomar filled in for Francona in the 2020 playoffs because of illness; I don’t count that
Okay, so it’s a foregone conclusion that as the 2nd best manager in Atlanta Braves history, he’s in the Atlanta HOF. What about the baseball HOF? Does 800 wins and a solid run of 7 playoff seasons in a row, including one World Series get him there? Or did he need another title and a few more years? I guess my real question is, will he be a Dale Murphy manager, close but not quite, or will he get extra points for doing it all for one organization?
I’d say he’s not HOF but a Murphy manager. 7 consecutive playoff seasons in the current environment isn’t all that amazing. I may have linked this before, but here’s what FanGraphs thought about Snitker’s managing in the 2021 postseason. It’s a fun read that brings back memories:
Thanks jamesd.
If there’s one common theme Snitker had it was to stomp your neck when he had you down and live to fight another day otherwise. As important as that is to make a deep run in the playoffs, it’s even more important on a random Tuesday night in July. It’s frustrating when you’ve paid money or invested time to watch a game and see your team apparently punting, and it caused a lot of dissatisfaction. But I can virtually guarantee whoever the next manager is, he won’t match Snitker’s success.
Thanks, JF. I do have some thoughts about Snit as a manager that I can share, but it may take a little while.
In the meantime, a word or two about retirement generally. I am two months older than Snitker. I turned 70 in August; he turns 70 in a couple of months. I retired from my full-time job at the end of June, just a month before turning 70. Snit is retiring a month before turning 70. I hope he feels as good about retirement as I do.
It was not an easy decision for me, as I loved my work. And unlike a baseball manager, I could have stayed as long as I wanted. There are some good reasons for academic tenure, and also some negative consequences, but at least for now it is very difficult to force someone out who doesn’t want to go. Nonetheless, my wife and I made the decision last fall that the 2024-25 academic year would be our last.
We retired and relocated to be closer to grandchildren in Atlanta (and 4 miles from Truist Park!) and also to have more time to visit our granddaughter in California. But it wasn’t just that. As Jonathan says, aging does take a toll. I think I’m still fairly sharp for an old guy, and I’ve been blessed with pretty good physical health despite some bad habits. But if you’re honest with yourself, you can see when it’s time to move on. As I said, I hope Snit sees that now, and that gets even clearer to him as time goes on.
Now, I haven’t quit cold turkey–I’m teaching part-time at another university and thoroughly enjoying that. It does help to remain involved to the extent you want to. Sounds like Snit can be as involved as he wants to be with the team.
I went to a Lyle Lovett concert on Sunday evening; he is almost as old as I am, but still very good in spite of that :). I was struck by what he said about aging. The hard part is seeing so many contemporaries leave us, but the good part is seeing how your life turned out. When you reach 70, it’s no longer about your accomplishments. We’ve had the chance to make our mark, for better or worse. Snit can look at how his life tuned out and feel very good about it.
(Having said all that, I won’t turn down the opportunity to go on for a couple more decades if given that chance)
https://x.com/foxsportsknox/status/1973477992589316353?s=46&t=WSNPrB2JyUoeKSn2PZsXZg
Will a MLB team ever hire a college baseball coach as manager?
Pat Murphy is the model here. Long time college coach, moved into a special advisor role and then made a manager.
The managing of games is such a small part of what managers do, both at the college and MLB level, that the two jobs really probably require a separate set of skills, with a small overlap called “game management.”
I think if any GM were to make an outside-the-box hire, it would be Alex Anthopoulus.
Vitello transformed the Tennessee baseball program from a long-term disaster to CWS champs, and the fanbase is invested like never before in my memory. Players seem to love him. He’s photogenic and gives good interviews.
That said, the source for the tweet is one line in Dave O’Brien’s Athletic article, so the question is, has somebody been whispering in DOB’s ear or is he just spitballing here? I’m inclined to believe he wouldn’t have brought it up out of thin air. Hmm.
Just curious JonathanF, what would you imagine are the chief differences between managing a college baseball team and a pro baseball team other than recruiting?
Well, I think recruiting is about 90 percent of a college coach’s job,…. and close to 0 percent of an MLB manager’s job.
But in addition, college coaches do a lot more instruction than MLB coaches, MLB coaches have a lot more scheduling decisions to make, since they’re planning for 162 games a year over 6 months, not 60 over 4 months.
Finally, a college coach has to answer to an AD, who has responsibilty for dozens of teams and has to dragoon resources so his team gets its fair share. The MLB manager, at the top of a pyramid, is much less concerned withthese sorts of resource questions, although they obviously will come up from time to time.
Sounds like it’s a lot harder to be a college coach. What would you say are the challenges particular to MLB managing that would make the transition difficult for someone like Vitello?
I don’t think it’s as much “harder” or “easier” than just “different.” As to the transition, (a) press relations; (b) hierarchy relations; (c) roster management; (d) player relations; (e) season length; and ((f) personal time management are all just things that are really, really different. The easiest part of the transition is game management.
Take a simple example: if I don’t use a college player for a few weeks in a row, the worst that can happen is that guy quits the team or transfers. That’s bad, but not nearly as bad as wasting several million dollars of the owners’ money. Indeed, player salaries, which I’m not paying, mean I have to figure a way to get along with a pro player, even if it just means getting out of each other’s way. If I take a dislike to a college player, I have much more leeway to give him a “learning experience.” That leeway is a lot more limited than it used to be, but still nowhere near the pressure an MLB manager has to keep his players happy. Is that harder or easier? Depends on how easy or hard it is for me to deal with people.
I’m guessing Bud Black is too old for the gig.
I’d be surprised if David Ross didn’t at least get an interview. But that’s pure speculation from me.
I think I want David Ross on our bench in some capacity next season.
I’d be fine with Vitiello if for no reason than the Braves were better when they had a red *assed mgr with anger management problems.
It would be nothing less than entertaining. He clearly knows the game, is young and he’s arguably way more qualified than someone like Mike Derosa.
It reminds me of the Geno Auriemma and Pat Summit takes. And the answer is yes, Geno would be a success in men’s hoops and Pat could 100% have coached men’s hoops successfully as well.
I agree that there is alot more to it than baseball, but I’d actually like the Braves to do something outside of the box.
https://x.com/DOBrienATL/status/1973835668104331276
Kelenic, enjoy Japan.
I’m slightly surprised about Diaz, but yeah.
Down to 47 on 40-man+IL. And 8 impending free agents. So I guess that’s that.
Vitello…man, that would seriously test the limits of this Braves/Vanderbilt fan.
The Braves sent Dansby Swanson away and entered the wasteland of shortstops ultimately over about $40 million over a term of seven years.
Meanwhile, they flushed about $25 million on the Kelenic experiment.
Poverty franchise.
If he’d been from Atlanta they would have kept him. Kennesaw was just too distant.
Probably less. I suspect Dansby would’ve eagerly signed for $150MM/6 and probably taken closer to $132MM/6 if it had been done a year early.
Now we have people on this forum clamoring to give $100MM to a 30 year-old who posted a .684 OPS for us over 5 weeks because that was way better than Nick Allen.
I also think Fried signs for $178MM/8 or less if you do it 2 years before he is a FA and you have the whole career of an ace
I was coming here to say that I miss Dansby Swanson but it looks like you guys covered it.
But with that said, he himself is a great player, magnetic, and handsome, but it’s also the position. The shortstop position has this this ability, if it’s played slick and elite, to make you like the player even more, IMO. It’s just such an important position.
Gleyber Torres seems like a Braves signing. He can play a decent 2B (no worse than Ozzie) or DH for you. I like the way his offensive game is trending–his walk rate and chase rate were elite this season. You can probably get him for something like a Profar contract, a tick more. If we were contemplating resigning Ozuna, I would much rather use those dollars on Torres.
I think it’ll be David Ross. Stars seem to be aligning there.
I had a long diatribe typed out, but I erased it. Anyways, I’m frustrated with this team’s posture towards spending and it could very well lead to this core peaking in 2021.
I would’ve read it and almost certainly concurred. Wasting a dynasty level core to save $20-40 million per year for a team that can actually afford it is just lunacy. And this offseason, there is a good chance we will do some panic spending to negate those savings and still be much worse off.
I see where Jim Bowden thinks the Braves still have a good core of a team. That has the effect of increasing my skepticism.
Ha.
I doubt AA is up at 7 on Saturday morning scouring the internet for unsolicited advice from randos about their fantasy leagues, but my experience in decades of being in an auction style keeper league is that you don’t win by acquiring everyone at or under value. You win by acquiring enough people under value that you can afford to overpay for what you need to win. We did that first part.
At some point Dansby’s contract (and Freddie’s) was likely to be a liability, but man, the window was right there.
Co-sign everything above. I was having the same thoughts watching Freddie, Dansby, and Fried all advance in the playoffs.
I have felt that Atlanta did not buy in to Hyers approach, but I will admit I was wrong. He worked on a much more patient approach and we finished 3rd in all of baseball in walks per game. I don’t have the stats but I would not be surprised if we upped our walk rate at the end of the season. Overall, I still don’t think his approach was best and it is probably a moot point since a new manager will likely bring in a whole new staff, but at least Atlanta seems to have bought in to what he did.
Dansby, Freddie, Fried, and William Contreras are important players on playoff teams. Says a lot about the personnel decisions this front office has made.
I know the Freddie situation was complicated and Olson is a dutiful replacement, but he cost prospects and dollars, prospects that could have been allocated to other needs.
If you want to rage even harder, Shea Langeliers and William Contreras both had 4 WAR seasons in 2025. Meanwhile, Sean Murphy…
If you want to go further down the rabbit hole, the 2021 team was largely won with Coppy’s guys.
There’s much to be determined, but my gut says that we’ve lived through the best of Braves baseball in the post-rebuild era. I think 2026 will be enormously revealing.
No question about that. I can certainly look at the end of 2025 and see a playoff team for 2026. Olson, Acuna, Riley, Baldwin, Harris is a good positional core. Profar is capable. If you can get HSK back, you feel pretty good about SS. If you go sign Gleyber Torres you have an elite on base guy to either DH or play 2nd when Albies implodes. A rotation with a recovered Strider, Schwelly, Sale, Waldrep and Holmes (maybe Richie) is as good as it gets if everyone is healthy. Lopez to the pen, a retained Iglesias, a returned JJ, and maybe one more signing is a very strong pen. All of that requires a lot of optimism. If Riley is actually in decline, if HSK walks and we go with Nick Allen at SS again, if the team bets on Albies and doesn’t get some help and then Albies continues to decline, if Harris continues to string together months of absenteeism, if Schwelly doesn’t recover, if Sale can’t stay healthy, if Strider just isn’t Strider anymore….some combination of those things, and you’re a 75-win team again. Our margin for error is fairly low at this point due to years of mismanagement. It could work out, but it’s going to take some luck.
My son shared this Reddit post with me. I think I’m now on board the George Lombard train. https://www.reddit.com/r/Braves/comments/1nxvyon/why_george_lombard_should_be_the_next_manager_of/?share_id=ZLIdpwpi1RpWbnL4bvnTP&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
Thanks, that’s interesting. I hadn’t know any of that about Lombard, just remember him as a great athlete who never panned out, so I thought he might be like Francouer in relying too much on his tools and not trying to (or, more charitably, maybe not being able to) adjust when his tools weren’t enough. It doesn’t sound like any of his teammates would’ve been able to convince him that another teammate was deaf for a month like a AAA team did to Francouer (when Francouer was 30, no less), though.
Reddit can be a cesspool, but it has so many readers that you do get some commenters like the one who said Lombard was his landlord for 3 years and described his personality.
Either you can hit major league pitching or you can’t. You can have all the other tools, but they mean squat if you lack the most important one. Lombard just couldn’t hit. Add him to the long list of toolsy guys who didn’t pan out.
A friendly reminder that the Braves chose to flush $20+ million on Jarred Kelenic and others over paying Teoscar Hernandez $23.5 million in the 2023 offseason.
I hate the Dodgers. I hate the Phillies. That series is whatever for me. It is nice to see the Phillies lose, though, so we can get rid of this narrative of CBP being some kind of secret weapon for them.
Gotta root against the Phillies just to make sure they’re out. Hopefully, someone will catch up w/ the Dodgers somewhere down the line.
How ’bout a Brewers/Mariners WS? (FWIW, those 1st 2 M’s/Tigers games were really good.)
It would be a bit like that very unoffensive Rangers/D-Backs WS matchup a few years ago.
Watching Yankees distress is always fun. There is a certain class of fan (no doubt inspired by George Steinbrenner from back in the day) who assume that you pay Max Fried to get wins, not the efforts of a human being to do thing that facilitate a win by a team.
I was all-in on Padres-Mariners: new winner! I’m down to the Mariners and yeah, I’ll take Milwaukee on the other side.
Just to let people know… I have a new “idea” I’m running down. New post soon.
Yeah, the natives are amusingly restless at the moment. Still, I kinda think the Yanks will take it back to Toronto, but… they’re 1-9 there this year. Just a house of horrors.
And if they don’t, I’ll get an upfront view of this year’s faceplant — plus, the obligatory off-season teeth-gnashing/Boone-bashing. (FWIW, I did enjoy watching the big-mouth Red Sox fans steadily turning into pillars of salt at Game 3 of the WC.)
Max Fried’s post-seasons have been a bit like Andy Pettitte’s early career — some huge post-season wins & great efforts… but when he got beat, he got bombed. If the Yanks do make it back to Toronto, he’ll get a chance at redemption in Game 5.
Don’t know which Andy Pettite you’re thinking of. That guy was clutch. I think his start against us in 1996 was one of his few bad ones. Now Clayton Kershaw, he forgot how to pitch in multiple postseasons. Max Fried is putting together one of the worst postseason resumes of any ace pitcher in memory.
The Phillies offense is doing their best impression of the Braves in October.
Fried had 2 great post-season efforts (@Mil, @Hou) that we needed to win the ’21 WS. Also, had great starts vs. the Reds & Dodgers in ’20.
But when he got hit (eg. vs. Philly), he got scorched. Last week, he pitched shutout ball vs. the Red Sox in Game 1 WC, then got wacked in Toronto.
As for Pettitte, nobody’s saying he didn’t earn a clutch rep for his whole body of work. But go look up his early post-season career w/ the Yanks. He def had big wins (eg. – the 1-0 game w/ Smoltz). But when he lost, he took a licking.
The Braves beat him up in Game 1 of the 1996 WS. The Indians smacked him in all 3 of his starts the ’97 & ’98 ALCS. Braves roughed him up again in the ’99 WS.
In 3 WS starts vs. ATL, he was 1-1 with a 7.54 ERA. Gave up 21 H in 14.1 IP. But, of course, everyone remembers the epic 1-0 game.
Some players get remembered for their successes (Don Larsen.) Others get remembered for their failures (Ralph Branca.) And most are completely forgotten (and if I could come up with one of them, I’d mention them here.)
Meanwhile, I’m watching Freeman, Contreras, and Swanson tonight. (Boy that was a good play Freddie made to end that game.) At least the Phillies have no ex-Braves.
The Dodgers are an absolute unit and I’m not even mad about it anymore.
I’m actually kind of enjoying the playoffs without having to deal with the Braves ruining my mood.
Post-2021, this team has kind of turned me from a Braves fan to a baseball fan who roots for the Braves.
It does help to purchase the top free agents each season
New thread: