NEW YORK — The Braves’ 8-0 loss to the Mets on Wednesday served to fan the flames of already rampant rumors that Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez could be fired as soon as Thursday on the team’s day off.
First baseman Freddie Freeman, the Braves’ “franchise player,” said after Wednesday’s game he had not heard the Gonzalez rumors and sounded disappointed to hear that it had come to that.
Speaking quietly in front of his locker, Freeman said blame for the Braves’ 7-20 start should fall on the players, not the manager.
“The guys he puts in the lineup, the guys he puts in games, we have to do our jobs, and we just haven’t done that for the first 27 games,” Freeman said. “That’s not No. 33’s (Gonzalez) fault, that’s our fault.”
The Braves started out 0-9 and lost a franchise-record 18 games in April while playing a schedule rated the most difficult in the National League for the first couple of months.
“I don’t know if it’s fair to put it all on him, because he’s not a player,” Freeman said of the poor start. “We’re the 25 guys that got to go out there and play every day, and we’re obviously not playing to our capabilities. And to say that’s Fredi’s fault is unfair, in my opinion.
“I didn’t know those rumors were going around. As a team member you hope you never have to answer those questions. Or you answer them once and hopefully just put them away. You’ve got to think about the Diamondbacks (series starting Friday), not think about the future. But if you’re going to quote me on something — it’s the players, not the manager.”
Gonzalez and his players all said they showed progress on a three-city trip to Boston, Chicago and New York that ended Wednesday. They were 3-3 on the trip before getting blasted Wednesday in one of their few blowout losses this season.
“We’re in pretty much every single game except for today,” Freeman said. “We’ve only been beaten bad in a couple of games, once by the Nationals, once by the Cardinals. I feel like we’ve been in a lot of games. Obviously fans don’t want to hear, like, oh, we’ve been in a lot of games, this and that, but ultimately we’re not winning. But when you win three games on a road trip against the teams we faced, against the pitchers we faced, it’s a big deal for us, and that’s the momentum and the positive things you need to take from it going into a weekend series where you’re going to face (Arizona’s Zack) Greinke, (Shelby) Miller and (Patrick) Corbin.
“You’ve just got to keep grinding, putting good ABs together, just stop trying to look at the record, your batting average, you’ve got to go out there and just keep playing. It’s been a tough 27 games, obviously. But we can make the last 130-something games fun if we go out there and keep playing games the right way.”
Asked if knowing they’ve faced many of the most dominant pitchers in the majors made it any easier to swallow their poor record, Freeman said, “When you see who we’re facing every single night – their (No. 5 starter) is Bartolo Colon, who can do anything he wants with the baseball. So it’s been a tough stretch for us, a tough April, a tough few weeks of May (coming), too.
“But we are in the big leagues, and we need to be able to compete against these guys and we just haven’t done our job the first 27 games and we need to get better at it.”
