It’s Over: Atlanta Braves Have Fired Manager Fredi Gonzalez

The long twist in the wind is over… Fredi Gonzalez has been relieved of his duties as Braves’ Manager.

Beat writer for the AJC David O’Brien had it first:

Bill Shanks has the next most important piece of information:

Technically, that’s true, though I strongly expect that the word “Interim” will be attached as Brian Snitker is “called up” from AAA.

Ah, here it is…

Fredi Gonzalez was the second-longest-tenured manager in the National League, behind only Bruce Bochy of the Giants.

Gonzalez managed in 4 seasons for the (then) Florida Marlins (276-279), still ranking as the Marlins manager with most career wins.  In his 6th seasons with the Braves, he was 434-413 (.512) for a total of 710-692.

In addition to presiding over the (currently) worst team in baseball, Gonzalez has also (almost comically) been saddled with the distinction of being the only manager not to see a reversed instant replay call so far this year.  The Braves are 0-9 in replay challenges.

Other Cards Being Shuffled

Tosca has been conjoined with Fredi for years, so this news was predictable.

It appears that Pitching Coach Roger McDowell and Hitting Coach Kevin Seitzer both survive this purge – at least for now.  Terry Pendleton comes into the dugout and Eddie Perez comes in from the bullpen.  Bo Porter will apparently remain as third base coach.

4:30PM UPDATE.  Finally, this afternoon, we got word on the replacements at Gwinnett:

Mike Alvarez has been a “roving” pitching instructor in the minor league for the Braves over the past several years.  Albert has been in the organization even longer than Snitker – signing with the Braves in 1972 and remaining as a coach and interim manager, most recently working with the Gulf Coast League Braves.

Many will be asking about the timing of this action – in the middle of the road trip.  I expect Gonzalez, in another exasperated conversation with John Coppolella today, probably told him something like “well, let’s just end it then”, thus forcing the issue that Coppolella had effectively been refusing to deal with over the past month or so.

Then again, maybe it happened last night:

So now we can expect a plethora of stories that have this theme:

This news is just breaking… we will have updates here as information continues to come in.