Since October 1990, the Braves have had three managers and four general managers. Over that span, the Mets – who, unlike the Braves, are still playing – have had 12 managers and 11 GMs.
(This total includes David Stearns, the current president of baseball ops, as a GM, the Mets having designated nobody as such. It does not include interims, of which there have been several.)
The Braves fired Russ Nixon as manager on June 22, 1990, president Stan Kasten having persuaded then-GM Bobby Cox to resume field duties. Their next major severance came Sept. 22, 2014, when Frank Wren was “terminated” as GM. On that day, John Schuerholz promised a return to The Braves’ Way.
Not every team, it must be said, has a Way. The Braves take theirs seriously. Their only major firings of this century were manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose designed-to-tank roster started the 2016 season 9-28, and GM John Coppolella, about to be banned by MLB for misdeeds in the international market. (President John Hart was later nudged aside, not that anybody noticed.)
Alex Anthopoulos was hired as GM on Nov. 17, 2017. Some changes have been made – Chuck Hernandez was dismissed as pitching coach a year later; scouting director Brian Bridges was offloaded in January 2019 – but the Braves under AA have returned to being what they were in the golden era of Schuerholz and Cox. The GM finds players. The manager deploys those players. The team wins every year, no exceptions.
Which makes the Braves’ dismissal of three coaches – Kevin Seitzer and Bobby Magallanes, who handled hitting, and Sal Fasano, who worked with catchers – an exceptional occurrence. The 2024 Braves won enough to make the playoffs, which given their injuries was an achievement. That said, this was the first season under Anthopoulos that could be labeled a regression.
2018: won the NL East.
2019: won the NL East.
2020: won the NL East; made the NLCS.
2021: won the NL East; won the World Series.
2022: 101-61, won the NL East.
2023: 104-60, won the NL East.
2024: 89-73, wild card.
Those injuries: Ronald Acuna and Spencer Strider were lost in the spring, not to return. A.J. Minter threw his last pitch on Aug. 11. Austin Riley’s last at-bat was Aug. 18. After missing two months, Sean Murphy had his worst season. After missing two months, Ozzie Albies could only hit right-handed. After missing two months, Michael Harris was quite good.
Oh, and Chris Sale, who’d been saved for an elimination game, couldn’t work that elimination game or in the Wild Card Round. Back spasms. (Backs are tricky, you know.)
The Braves’ run of division titles was broken by Philadelphia, but you’d rather be the Braves than the Phillies. Most of the Braves’ best players are under long-term contract, most being 30 or younger. Most of the best Phillies are likewise under club control, but all are on the high side of 30. The Braves should be good for a good while longer.
So why change coaches? And why change hitting coaches a year after matching the MLB record for home runs and setting the new standard for slugging percentage?
It wasn’t that the 2024 Braves didn’t hit. They finished fourth in homers. Also: Hitting was down across the sport, not just in Cobb County. But the Braves didn’t just hit less – they reached base less. In 2023, their on-base percentage was an MLB-best .340; a year later, it was a 16th-best .309.
Of the healthy core hitters, only Marcell Ozuna was better in 2024 than in 2023. Even Acuna had a slow start. Seitzer has done great work here and other places, and it wasn’t as if he worked less hard. Sometimes, though, the same words don’t have the same impact. Sometimes change is needed, even if it’s change for change’s sake.
As a franchise, the Braves pride themselves on never making a move in haste. The lopping of three coaches, all of whom had a year left on their contracts, is a considered move. The Braves went from a historic season of hitting to being a team that subsisted mostly on pitching. The Braves went from having baseball’s best record to making the playoffs on tiebreakers.
The Braves could have returned their coaching staff intact and nobody would have blinked. That they made three changes sends a message. Better is needed. Better is expected. Better is, or should be, The Braves’ Way.
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