Another day, another frustrating loss for the Atlanta Braves — and one more reason for the team’s fans to start calling for manager Brian Snitker to lose his job.
To be clear, there was more than enough blame to go around for Friday night’s 5-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox, which dropped Atlanta back down to four games below .500 and kept them 9.5 games back in the NL East. The offense, once again, failed to show up; it’s hard to win any games when you only score one run, or when key players like Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II are all mired in funks at the same time. And the bullpen remains in capable of keeping the team within striking distance, much less holding a lead.
But you can’t overhaul a whole roster at once. You can, however, make a change at manager — and Snitker just keeps on making it easy for fans to call for his head. Not only did the veteran skipper allow Boston an insurance run by trying to squeeze an extra inning out of starter Grant Holmes — a converted reliever whose struggles multiple times through the order are well-documented — but he also didn’t put up much of a fight after a controversial replay review squashed a potential Braves rally in the bottom of the seventh. Oh, and all of this happened on the same day that the team announced AJ Smith-Shawver would need Tommy John surgery, an injury that Snitker and his coaching staff needed Spencer Strider to make them aware of.
At this point, it seems pretty clear that Snitker just isn’t the right man to get this ship turned around, both as an in-game strategist and as an emotional leader. But while Braves fans might be ready to move on, the reality is that it’s not so simple; in fact, it’s hard to imagine the team making a move midseason, no matter how bad things get.
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Brian Snitker’s history with the Braves makes moving on difficult
Atlanta is the only professional organization that Snitker has ever known. He signed with the team as a free agent out of college in 1977, and after three years as a player in the Minors, he pivoted to coaching — working his way up through the farm system before landing on Bobby Cox’s staff in the late 80s. All told, it amounts to nearly 50 years as a member of the Braves in some capacity, a run that includes leading the team to a World Series title in 2021.
That’s not the sort of history that any organization would take lightly, but especially not this organization, one that’s prioritized loyalty and institutional knowledge dating back to the Cox years. Snitker may have lost his fastball, and he may have lost the clubhouse, but he’s built up enough equity to earn the benefit of the doubt — and avoid getting unceremoniously dumped in the middle of a season.
That might not be what Braves fans want to hear, especially after another exasperating loss in a season that’s rapidly spiraling out of control. But this team’s problems go much deeper than the manager, and there’s something to be said for treating people right. This is who Atlanta is, for better or worse, and with Snitker playing out what already figured to be the final year of his coaching career, he and the team are going down with this ship together.
