The interim manager is now the permanent manager. Or at least as permanent as a one-year guaranteed contract suggests.
The Braves love Brian Snitker. They love the fact he put his arms around a wounded team and rescued their season. They love that he won almost as many games as he lost (59-65), which this season qualifies for sainthood, and went 20-10 down the stretch, which supplies marketing with just enough talking points to tease ticket sales in a new stadium.
They love Snitker so much that they’ve decided to keep dating. They’re just not sure about the marriage thing, yet. One year plus a club option for a new manager: That’s more like being pinned than engaged.
But Snitker turns 61 next week and he just received his dream job offer after 40 years with one organization, so he wasn’t about to pull a “Norma Rae” and hold up a sign in a factory reading “UNION.”
“I didn’t have any expectations or anything like that (with the contract) — I always tell people you’re never guaranteed tomorrow in this game,” Snitker said Tuesday by phone. “All I know is I’m in a great situation. They pretty much told me they had confidence in what we’re dong and they wanted me for the job.”
Sold.
Snitker officially interviewed last week. So did Bud Black and Terry Pendleton and Eddie Perez and Bo Porter and Ron Washington. But Snitker mused that his interview really stretched over “the last four or five months.”
What he accomplished was remarkable.
Called back up from the minors like a 60-year-old, 40-year prospect, he replaced the fired Fredi Gonzalez in May and the players responded to him. There was calm. Snitker was like a big cup of chamomile tea. The roster got better and the results improved.
Braves president John Hart and general manager John Coppolella looked around, came to realize there was a shallow pool of candidates and they couldn’t do any better.
Was this their plan all along? Unlikely.
“If I were the Braves, I wouldn’t have thought this would happen,” he said. “I feel blessed.”
Let’s start there. Because regardless of how next season unfolds, this is one of sports’ ultimate feel-good stories. Snitker has played, coached, managed, instructed and probably laundered and cooked for one organization since 1977. He signed with the Braves as an undrafted minor-league catcher, two years before Coppolella was born.
Snitker was expected to be a temp, albeit a deliriously thankful and happy temp. It was only two years ago when the Braves’ front office, looking for a scapegoat after an early playoff exit in 2013, sent Snitker from coaching third base in the majors to managing their Triple A team in Gwinnett. So yes, this is a strange and unexpected hire for a team looking to present a fresh face as it prepares to move into a new ballpark.
But that that doesn't mean it's the wrong hire. Snitker is popular with players, media and fans (winning 71.4 percent of the vote in a reader poll last week, easily outdistancing Black at 10.4 percent and Pendleton at 8.3). And he won.
“I wanted to try to provide a calming influence, to let them know that I know it’s a tough game,” Snitker said. “I just wanted them to go out and have fun. I’ve been at this for so long, I knew life was too short for me to go in there and start jumping on the guys.”
What we don’t know – and the Braves can’t know, which explains the short term contract – is the impact Snitker will have over the course of a full season. That’s not meant as a criticism. But the truth is the Braves won a lot of meaningless games at a time when the season had long been lost. There’s an entirely different level of pressure and expectation when players can play with that, “Nobody cares, nobody’s watching, let’s have fun,” kind of attitude.
The level of scrutiny will be higher next season.
It also will be unusual that a new manager’s staff will include three coaches who were candidates for the job: Pendleton, Perez, Washington. (Porter has been shifted to some nondescript front office position.) This qualifies as one of the strangest firing/hiring evolutions I’ve ever witnessed. Add to that, pitching coach Roger McDowell was fired before a new manager was hired. His replacement is Chuck Hernandez, a well traveled major league pitching coach who was the Braves’ minor league pitching coordinator this season.
Snitker said he “became aware as the process went on” that McDowell would not be retained. He said only that he “expressed my opinion” and McDowell is “a good friend. In the end, the organization made a call.”
Spoken like a true company man, one who after 40 years has a much better view of things.
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