Well, this isn’t what I had in mind. Walt Weiss has been the bench coach in Atlanta for most of the past decade. The 1988 Rookie of the Year, he’s about as much of a known quantity as the Braves could have selected — with the exceptions, that is, of guys like Terry Pendleton and Eddie Perez, whom they have passed over each time they’ve had an open managerial slot.

His career

We all know Weiss, so I’ll keep this briefer than I would have if the Braves had gone for an outsider. My main source for the below, other than his bb-ref page, is his SABR bio, as well as a New York Daily News feature profile that the bio relies on. Weiss grew up in Suffern, New York, just across the border from New Jersey and about 30 miles northwest of Manhattan. He’s one of six people from his school to be drafted, and the only one to make the majors as a player.*

* Weiss’s classmate Tony DeFrancesco eventually made the majors as a manager, becoming interim skipper for Houston in 2012, the second of three straight 100-loss seasons that team endured at the nadir of their rebuild.

Weiss was drafted in the 10th round as a high schooler, but he elected not to sign and instead went to Chapel Hill. UNC coach Mike Roberts discovered Weiss while he was on a recruiting trip in the state to see B.J. Surhoff, who was a high school superstar in Rye, 30 miles to the east. As Roberts said of him: “The look in his eye always said, ‘Don’t even think about taking me out of the lineup unless the bone’s sticking out. And maybe not even then.”

He and B.J. played together in college, and when they came out in the 1985 draft, Surhoff was drafted first overall and Weiss was taken by the A’s just 10 picks later, with the eleventh overall pick.* He marched steadily through the minors, earning a cup of coffee in 1987, and a starting job the following year, as his sure glove work earned him Rookie of the Year honors. (And it was a perfectly reasonable choice, as the top five candidates all had between 2.5 and 3.5 WAR, and Weiss actually finished with the highest career WAR of all of them.)

* UNC’s 1985 draft class is quite possibly the best in school history, ahead of 2006, when both Andrew Miller and Daniel Bard were taken, and possibly also ahead of 2009, when Kyle Seager, Dustin Ackley, Tim Federowicz, and Alex White were drafted.

He embodies an archetype that we all know quite well: the good-glove shortstop who can’t hit very well. He did have one secret advantage over a lot of those guys, though: he actually got on base, as his lifetime .258/.351/.326 attests, and he retired with exactly the same number of strikeouts as walks – 658 of each, in 5516 plate appearances.

He played for Oakland until 1992, winning a championship ring with them in 1989. But they traded him to the expansion Marlins before their inaugural 1993 season, as they wanted to make room for Mike Bordick. After one year, he signed as a free agent with the Rockies, where he played four seasons, before Atlanta signed him in November 1997, two weeks after Jeff Blauser became a free agent.

It’s notable that Weiss’s career year came in 1998, his first year in Atlanta – he posted by far the best batting line of his career, and made his only All-Star team, and he did it while in an effective platoon with Ozzie Guillen. However, he was 34 that year, and he was below replacement level in part-time work the following summer; he only collected 227 PA in 2000, but he posted a vintage .260/.353/.313 line with his steady glove, as he shared a clubhouse with his old college teammate B.J. Surhoff for the only time in their professional careers.

After retirement

Weiss came back to Denver in 2002, where he still makes his home. He worked as an assistant to the general manager through 2008. He then coached at his sons’ high school for a few years before the Rockies asked him to become their manager, which he did from 2013-2016. (His record was just 283-365, but Colorado loses every year and that’s not the manager’s fault.)

As a high schooler, his SABR bio notes that he was the quarterback of his school’s football team his senior year, and he also was “part of the Mounties’ county-championship 4X400 relay team.” In recognition of his achievements, his high school baseball team now plays on Walt Weiss Field. At some point, he also became a black belt in tae kwon do, and after retirement, he trained in mixed martial arts.

He was gritty, and a gamer, and a yard rat, and the kind of kid who, apparently, on a childhood trip to Yankee Stadium, took some of the dirt off the field and kept it as a memento, swearing he’d play there one day. And, indeed, he did, twenty-one different times. He also absolutely adores Bruce Springsteen, and I’m not going to rip on him for that, because, honestly, fair enough.

What this means

There are really two clear takeaways for me from this, and I don’t like either of them, but I’ve already shared my comments plenty of times so I’ll try to just keep this to analysis.

  1. Continuity. Walt Weiss has been a coach with the team for most of the past decade, after playing with the team at the end of the magical 1990s decade. He knows everybody and everybody knows him, and hiring him is a signal from the front office to the clubhouse: we believe in you. No major changes are coming. We think you already have what it takes.
  2. Culture. He has been a huge part of the clubhouse, and promoting him to manager is a vote of confidence not just in him but in the existing clubhouse culture. Weiss epitomizes toughness and grit, and hiring him as manager means the team is doubling down on that philosophy.

With this hiring decision, the Braves considered whether to stay the course or to change direction, and they decided to stay the course. At least, that is, for now – the Braves have invested quite a lot of resources in Alex Anthopoulos’s players, and the 2024 and 2025 seasons were huge disappointments for a roster with championship ambitions. Two years ago, Kevin Seitzer was fired; this fall, Brian Snitker retired (and may have had his hand forced); if the Braves continue to struggle, Anthopoulos himself will likely find himself on the hot seat.

We will see whether their confidence is warranted. In the background, of course, is the likely lockout in 2027, as the Collective Bargaining Agreement expires and the commissioner and owners have telegraphed their willingness to lock out the players in order to get their desired salary cap. All moves this winter occur in the context of what could be a significantly curtailed – or potentially utterly lost – season. So while Weiss is not a blockbuster name, he also may just be a caretaker.

Should things look significantly different for the team or for the league in two years, it will not be difficult to maneuver him out of the manager’s seat and bring in another person, the way it might have been for a higher-profile hire. The new Nationals manager, Blake Butera, is 33. Weiss is about to turn 62.

A few years ago, we had a team full of young All-Stars, nearly all of them signed to long-term contracts. Things have changed. We’re still on the course we were on back then. And that might still be the right course of action: those stars are just a couple of years older, and there is a lot of talent up and down the roster. Weiss could work out the way that Snitker did a decade ago: he’s a known quantity whom the players trust, and he may be able to inspire them to produce their best work. He won’t be able to teach them any new ideas, but perhaps he will be able to bring in a coaching brain trust that will be capable of that.

What actions the Braves take with the rest of the winter, as they seek to fill out their roster and Weiss’s coaching staff, will substantially influence his likelihood of success. I can only wish him the best.