When the Braves fired manager Fredi Gonzalez late Monday after the team’s 28th loss in 37 games, it hardly surprised people around baseball or Braves followers. The question is, how did the Braves go from feeling compelled to give him a contract extension in July 2015 to firing him in May 2016?
After all, it wasn’t as if any pundit or knowledgeable baseball person outside the Braves organization picked this team to even flirt with a .500 record in 2016, and many predicted the Braves would lose 100 or more games.
There had been rampant speculation about Gonzalez’s job security for quite some time despite consensus low expectations for a team in the midst of rebuilding (Braves officials refused to call it a rebuild until recently).
In mid-May 2015, with the Braves were hovering around .500 — surpassing all expectations at the time — respected Fox Sports baseball writer Ken Rosenthal reported that Gonzalez could be fired, in part because first-year president of baseball operations John Hart might want to hire his own manager.
But two months later the Braves announced contract extensions for Gonzalez and his coaches for 2016 with club options for 2017, their first season in a new ballpark being built in Cobb County. That contract announcement was made after the Braves had lost their final five games before the All-Star break to slip to 42-47.
Some found the timing of the contract extensions a bit odd. But the Braves didn’t want Gonzalez going through the rest of the season with lame-duck status and questions about his future hanging over the team.
“We didn’t give him a bullpen; obviously we traded Craig Kimbrel right at opening day,” Hart said after announcing the extensions. “It’s been really difficult to manage the bullpen, especially when we lost some guys with injuries, we lose some guys on PED (drug suspensions). All of a sudden we got real thin, real fast. And I think Fredi’s done as good a job as he can with the bullpen. … All along, you look up and you go, what do you expect in a manager? What do you want in a manager? I think Fredi’s demonstrated what we want to see.”
Ten months later, they fired Gonzalez and bench coach Carlos Tosca.
“You don’t like to even think about making these decisions,” Hart said Tuesday. “When I came over 18 months ago (to take over baseball operations), I wanted Fredi to be our manager and to give him a chance to be that guy. We extended him last year along with the staff, and I think as we got into spring training and opened the season and got off to the bad start, we wanted to keep providing opportunities and see if we could turn this thing around. And it obviously just didn’t look like it was going to happen.”
The Braves were 400-332 under Gonzalez from opening day 2011 through July 7, 2015, but had a 34-81 record since under Gonzalez while fielding a team with one of baseball’s lowest payrolls and an unabated string of trades and other roster moves.
Players shuttled between Triple-A and the majors as the Braves tried to find a competitive mix at the big-league level while the minor league system was being transformed from one of the worst to one of the best.
After ranking among the major league leaders in bullpen ERA for many years, most recently leading the majors with a 2.46 ERA in 2013, the Braves’ patchwork bullpen slipped to 11th in ERA in 2014, 29th (4.69) in 2015, and 27th (4.74) this season through Tuesday. Their starting rotation was 20th in ERA (4.27) in 2015 and 18th (4.68) this season through Tuesday.
The offense, after ranking 29th in runs in 2014 and last in runs (573) and home runs (100) in 2015, is last again in both categories through the first quarter of the 2016 season, with 11 home runs in 37 games before Gonzalez was fired. Through Tuesday the Braves had 13 home runs and a .609 OPS, while no other major league team had fewer than 30 homers or an OPS below .652.
So, why did Gonzalez take the fall now, when most industry insiders agree that no manager could have done much better with the current roster and an early schedule that was rated the toughest in baseball?
Braves officials said it came down to the fact that they had already decided to hire a new manager for the 2017 season in their new ballpark, with a bigger payroll and so many prospects and young players expected to be on the roster. Rather than have Gonzalez twist in the wind the rest of the season and questions about his status continue to be a distraction from what they insist can still be a decent season, team officials decided to fire him now.
“This was something painful for us,” Braves general manager John Coppolella said. “John (Hart) and I both care greatly about Fredi. … One point that John made that really hits home is that we made a choice that he wasn’t going to be our guy for 2017, so why would we not make the move now?”
Front-office officials panned some of Gonzalez’s strategic moves, including his bullpen usage and choice of pinch-hitters in some early losses this season. Coppolella could recite each of those instances without looking at notes.
So, before the season reached the quarter pole, the Braves fired him and his bench coach, moving Brian Snitker into the interim managerial role, switching Terry Pendleton from first-base coach to bench coach and Eddie Perez from bullpen coach to first-base coach.
Pendleton and Perez likely will get consideration for the job when the Braves hire a new manager after the season, as will outside candidates such as former Braves player Mark DeRosa, veteran manager Bud Black and others.
“It’s a very important hire for us,” Coppolella said. “We hope we can find somebody that’s here for a long time. We have a really good farm system; we’ve got a lot of young players. There are a lot of good things that Fredi did, but we feel like there are a lot of good days ahead for us.”