For the most part, Atlanta Braves manager Walt Weiss has done a great job in his first year on the job. It seems like he manages the clubhouse well, and the number of forward-thinking decisions that he has made in games has been pretty refreshing. Unfortunately, Monday night's extra-inning loss to the Mets was not his finest hour.
There were a lot of guilty parties for the Braves in this game. Raisel Iglesias made one of the worst pitch decisions you can against Juan Soto. Owen Murphy hung a curveball in his debut just as he was close to wriggling his way out of trouble. The offense scored six runs, but they also went 4-18 with runners in scoring position, with Joey Bart and Austin Riley being particularly bad offenders. This is a game Atlanta should have won, but they collectively punted it away.
However, in this case, Weiss missed multiple opportunities to keep the Braves from getting themselves in trouble, and that proved very costly.
With the @Mets down to their last out, Juan Soto CRUSHES a go-ahead 3-run homer 😤 pic.twitter.com/dztLmJu5mq
— MLB (@MLB) July 7, 2026
Walt Weiss did not hit the right notes in the Braves' brutal loss to the Mets
Hindsight is 20/20, and much of the criticism that comes a manager's way in losses is very silly. Sometimes you will see usually steady relievers have an off-night, and toxic fans inevitably come out of the woodwork yelling at the manager for using them at all. That isn't what happened here.
In the case of Monday's loss, Raisel Iglesias clearly didn't have his best stuff in the ninth inning, and he was about to face Soto, who has OWNED Iglesias previously. Weiss should have made the decision right away to not pitch to Soto, whether via intentional walk or giving strict instructions to not pitch to him. When the count got to 3-1, there needed to be more of an intervention. Weiss may not have been thrilled with the idea of having a bunch of baserunners, but the odds that Iglesias could deal with the righty coming up next were MUCH higher than him putting Soto away in that situation.
The suspect decision-making didn't end there. Turning to Murphy to make his major league debut in extra innings is pretty suspect. Murphy largely looked good, and no one is holding those go-ahead runs against him permanently, but you want to set young guys up for success when they first get called up, and Weiss failed in that on Monday. Weiss also over-managed the lineup so much that the configuration they were forced to employ in extras was...less than optimal simply because they didn't have anyone left.
Again, any number of Braves players could have stepped up and made these decisions irrelevant, and Atlanta's roster deficiencies (particularly in the outfield and the bullpen) didn't exactly give Weiss a ton of great options in some of these cases. However, there were also some moments where, in the moment, Weiss didn't make the right choices, and they helped lead to the loss.
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