You might think that the off-season might do a ‘slow roll’ in getting going for the Braves…take some time off, perhaps. You would be wrong.
The Atlanta Braves have hit the ground running – talking about off-season plans, interviewing managers, announcing awards… it’s been busy already.
An urgency of action was evident last week when we found that the team had already interviewed all of their “internal” managerial candidates. That put the Front Office into position to immediately begin interviews of external candidates, which began yesterday.
Multiple media reports indicated that former managers Ron Washington and Bud Black were invited to Atlanta to speak with Coppy, Hart, et al. Black’s interview was on Monday. This continues a theme mentioned that the Braves are keen to hire a manager with experience. That would tend to leave out a number of highly-thought of bench coaches, and perhaps some such as Terry Pendleton as well.
It’s interesting to see how various media are characterizing this ‘contest’, particularly when it’s hard to see how any of them actually have real insight at this point:
Buddy Bllack, the leading candidate to become next #Braves manager, has been formally invited for interview, per @mlbbowman
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) October 3, 2016
I'd say it's a two-horse race, but I think Snit is slightly in front of Black right now. Things could change. https://t.co/KlrKnA9JGz
— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) October 4, 2016
The reason for Bowman’s thought is this: because Snit had success – and the backing of the players – he has effectively shut out the others already on staff, something acknowledged by John Hart yesterday (from Dave O’Brien’s post on the subject):
"President of baseball operations John Hart was candid Monday when he said that while Pendleton, Perez and Porter all were attractive candidates, “It would be very difficult to bring a coach off of Brian’s staff with the job Brian did.”"
I’ll go further. Let’s suppose that Bud Black is a top choice (and this will apply regardless of what ‘external name’ you use): if you hire such a manager, then there is a level of control he would undoubtedly like to have, which would likely mean bringing in a number of ‘his people’ to fill out the staff.
Do the Braves want to change that much? Would they be willing to lose any of Pendleton, Perez, Snitker, Seitzer, Porter or McDowell?
It is also a fair question on whether some of the existing staff will be content with the status quo if Snitker is ultimately hired.
Terry Pendleton, for one, has been in this position before – being the more-or-less 2nd place candidate in a job race that has only one prize available. He was runner-up to Tony La Russa for the Cardinals job several years back, and may have been in the same position when Fredi Gonzalez got the job after the 2010 season. Snitker was supposed to be a true interim filler for the role, which would give TP another shot but… you know how that is going.
This process is clearly moving forward quickly. The Braves seem comfortable with not waiting for other candidates to come from playoff teams. I therefore expect the interviews to be concluding by week’s end and for the sake of moving on to the next tasks at hand, I believe a new manager will be named by early next week.
Who then? It’s hard to ignore Snitker, and on top of everything else, he knows the organization as well as anyone. I think it’s his job to lose.
NOTE: Freddie Freeman is the National League Player of the Month. Anyone surprised? Oh, maybe Jon Heyman is. But I already talked about that yesterday.