Alex Anthopoulos Is Focused On Integrity and Character In Atlanta's Next Manager

Atlanta's President of Baseball Operations needed to wrap up the 2025 season before he started on the Braves manager search

Despite everything you may have read about the managerial candidates for the Atlanta Braves, President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos does not already have a list he’s working off of and they have yet to contact a single person about the Braves vacancy.

“ We do not currently have a list. We have not reached out to (anyone).”

In a wide-ranging conversation on Saturday morning, Anthopoulos addressed the Atlanta media in his customary end-of-season press conference, the first time he’s done it without manager Brian Snitker, who announced he was transitioning to an advisor role on Tuesday morning.

Here’s what Anthopoulos said on Atlanta’s managerial search, where it stands as of now, and what he’s looking for in the next skipper. This is Part One of our recap, with Monday’s newsletter focused on the non-manager search content of the interview.

Let’s talk about it.

Snit’s move to the front office was planned

Similar to Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox, who moved from the dugout to the front office when he retired in 2010, Snitker’s transition to the front office was planned to the point of it being in his last contract. As Anthopoulos recounted his conversation with Snitker prior to the three-year contract extension Snit signed in January of 2023:

“How long do you want to keep doing this? […] Do you wanna manage three more years, to (age) 70? Do you wanna do that then? And he said, ‘yeah, great’. So we talked to him about, you know, basically, you’re a Brave for life. What do you wanna do? And he basically said, ‘let’s do a five-year deal. You know, take me to 75 and just kind of reevaluate at that point.’ […]  So, you know, we essentially entered into an eight-year contract at that time; we put it to paper and all that stuff. Now, we announced the extension at the big league level. You know, that five-year (advisory) deal was: that’s his news, how he wants to handle it, all that kind (of) stuff, right? I alluded to this a little earlier. It’s his career and he handles things how he wants to. I respect it.”

Despite the expiration of Snitker’s managerial deal, Anthopoulos quickly clarified when asked that Snitker would have returned to the dugout if he said he wanted to return in 2026. “He would have been back. […]  If he had said, ‘Hey, I want to go one more year’, we would’ve just added the five years to (20)27, you know, instead of starting in (20)26. So he always had something in place for ‘26 to ‘30, but it’s not set in stone. We can have a conversation and change it.”

They haven’t started looking for a new manager

Anthopoulos was clear that, because of the timing of Snitker’s on-field ‘retirement’ decision, the organization hadn’t yet begun the legwork of searching for a new manager when he spoke to us on Saturday.

“ We do not currently have a list. We have not reached out to (anyone).” AA explained that the week’s been compressed with not only the usual end-of-season tasks, but also the Snitker-related meetings - with the assistant coaches, relevant staff members, etc.

 “This happened so quickly with Snit’s Tuesday conversation, Wednesday press conference; I wanted to get some things done internally. You know, we have expiring contracts, we have employees, your manager’s not coming back. That creates a lot of uncertainty for staff. And my goal, and it was really a race to get to Friday in my mind, (was) to communicate with people internally. And that was my sole focus. So not a minute spent on managers or any of that kind of stuff because it’s not fair to the people that are currently Atlanta Braves employees that need to know what’s going on. […] So I wanted to at least get my thoughts together, get some direction and communicate with them. And I was able to do that by end of day last night. And now we’re doing this, which obviously needed to get that done. And once that ends, I will now turn my attention to the manager by creating a list, to having candidates.”

Despite repeated questions, Anthopoulos also declined to discuss specifics on what he would want in the next manager - whether or not they’d be outside the Bobby Cox coaching tree, what the most important qualities were, or even a timeline for making the hire (he said they wanted to get the person in place as soon as possible, as they can’t pause the rest of the offseason, but also said that they did not want to rush the decision).

A lot of casual fans have called Anthopoulos a ‘liar’, at worst, or said that they can’t trust him (at best) after he said in last winter’s version of this press conference that payroll was going to go up and he didn’t expect to lose any coaches. I could definitely tell that he was attempting to be as vague as possible while still answering our questions this time around, so thanks to everyone for ruining that for us.

It’s a VERY involved process

Anthopoulos insisted that this was a big decision that the team needed to not force - let the process unfold, however long it might take.

On the timing, though, Anthopoulos did clarify that some teams being in the postseason would not be a hindrance to interviewing a candidate. “ No, because we would get permission (requests) when we were in the playoffs, right? We’d get permissions on coaches and staff and all that. And you know, we work it through off days and things like that. You could still touch base and communicate. You can’t wait. […]  Teams will work with you, (because) people don’t want to deny others of an opportunity.”

And at the end of the day, the actual interview isn’t even as important as the other background that his staff will work up on the candidate.  “I would say interviews are very important. But I would say the background work is much, much, much, much - as many of those as you can add - more important. We’re not hiring someone to work in the front office, we’re not hiring - you think of a setting when you’re doing an interview, right? Whoever you’re interviewing with, what the setting is. It’s not the clubhouse, it’s not 26 players. It’s just not - I don’t know that that’s the best environment to evaluate someone. So I think the background work is gonna take the most time and that’s gonna be critically important. And that will tell us, I believe, more about the candidates.”

The main thing they’re trying to answer is, essentially, what it’s like to work with that person.  “I would say trust: the word that would link to that is people would say character, but I would say integrity is the word that comes to mind. And Snit’s integrity is off the charts. It’s just: at all levels, at all times, no matter who he’s dealing with. And anyone that worked with works with that guy would feel the same way.” That integrity is what helped AA and Snit mesh together when Alex first joined the organization in late 2017. “ I didn’t know him. I knew nothing about him. You know, we were brought together, we were gonna work (together). I had a very open mind. And it wasn’t a tough decision, you know, to keep working with him.”

AA did clarify, though, that he does not want to take advantage of the opportunity to hire a new manager to shift to a front-office-driven experience on game day or change the current day-to-day operations of how the team is managed. The new manager, similar to Snit, will likely be the one to make the lineup and make the final decision. It provides for more accountability with the players when they can discuss platoon/pinch-hit/bullpen deployment decisions with the manager instead of him redirecting those “upstairs” to the front office. “There’s no right or wrong way to do this, […] my style has always been: the manager has the lineup card.”

AA clarified that this GM/manager “partnership”, as he termed it, extends to roster decisions, as well. “ I’ll go to him sometimes with trades or ideas or, ‘Hey, we’re gonna send so and so down, what do you wanna do?’ And I tell him, ‘well, if you’re not gonna use so and so, I think we should keep so and so and send down this player’, but if he doesn’t have the confidence and he likes the other player, then we’re gonna go the direction he wants to go. So this is a partnership. There’s a give and take; that shouldn’t change.

We won’t get anything during the process

In typical “Atlanta front office” fashion, AA confirmed that we would not learn anything about the process, hopefully, until the actual announcement was made.  “I know this is not the answer you guys want to hear, […] and I know it makes it tough on you guys, but if we do our job the way I want us to do it, you guys won’t have anything.”

AA explained that secrecy can be difficult because it’s a very involved process that includes a whole group of people doing background work, requesting interview permissions, etc, but secrecy is important to their process, out of respect to those candidates who have jobs with other organizations while they are being interviewed. “You’re using a lot of people organizationally and we’ll be telling everyone we use organizationally to please don’t say anything.” And it’s not even solely front office members - AA plans to be as thorough as possible on the background, and he’s willing to talk to whoever he needs to for an understanding of the candidate’s integrity and character. “ It could be anybody that’s in the organization that could have had a tie, you know, so we’ll do that. It could be player, coach, executive, clubhouse (attendant). […]  that could be people that have played with people, worked with people, similar vein than you would when you’re trying to dig on the background of a player. It’s just a lot easier with an employee, right? They’ve probably been through (the) organization’s system, they’ve touched a lot of individuals at that point, right?”

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We’ll be back on Monday with part two, covering the non-managerial content of the press conference.