There Is an Obvious Choice for Atlanta's Next Manager

Brian Snitker is widely expected to retire from managing the team this offseason, and we know who should replace him

It’s all but confirmed that this is Brian Snitker’s last season as manager of the Atlanta Braves.

First joining the organization as a player in 1977, transitioning to a minor league coach in 1980, and taking the big league manager’s seat in the 2016 season, this year is the 49th of Snitker’s career in the organization. But owing to his expiring contract, advanced age (he turns 70 this October), and the team’s disappointing performance in the standings this season, the veteran manager is widely expected to take an off-field role next year to complete his 50th season with the organization before hanging them up.

And despite Atlanta’s poor placement in the standings, this will be one of the more in-demand jobs in baseball. Whoever inherits the manager’s seat will take over a roster full of talented veterans, from 2023 NL Most Valuable Player Ronald Acuña Jr. to 2024 Cy Young winner Chris Sale. There’s MLB’s ironman in Matt Olson at first base, who has started 741 consecutive games, good for 5th place in MLB’s expansion era. There are young strikeout artists Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach, who will (health permitting) terrorize opposing lineups for the next half-decade.

There will be a lot of interest in the role, but when you break down all the considerations that go into this, there’s one logical choice to get the job. Let’s talk about it.

There are a few directions Atlanta can go

Let’s think about the options here for a new manager. To me, it is possible to go in one of a few directions.

Option 1: An established major league manager

All things being equal, this makes the most sense from the perspective of “you have a roster that should be competing for championships; get a manager with plenty of experience to push them over the top.”

And if Atlanta truly does want to go for someone who is established and respected in MLB, there are two prominent names on the market: Gabe Kapler and Skip Schumaker.

Kapler’s the more experienced of the two - spending two years in Philadelphia and four in San Francisco, Kapler has a career 456-411 record. He guided the Giants to a 107-55 record in 2021, topping the LA Dodgers to win the NL West, although his Giants were eliminated in the NL Divisional Series by those very same Dodgers in five games.

Kapler’s seen as analytically savvy and a “tinkerer” - that 2021 Giants team features 148 different lineups to get through 162 regular-season games.¹

New Braves Today contributor Grae Cole is also a fan of Kapler, telling me that he seems to strike the rare blend between being both an analytics coach and a players’ coach. Grae also passed along a great ESPN article from 2022 about Kapler, which definitely helps make a positive impression.

He’s definitely a modern manager, one that wears high-top sneakers on the field and has tattoos on his hand², something that would likely make Bobby Cox fans shirk in disapproval.

But for all his pros, there are some cons to Kapler, as well. His disastrous tenure in Philadelphia, where he lasted only two years as manager, was marked by reports that the clubhouse was mismanaged and the bullpen wasn’t utilized effectively. Anecdotes from after his tenure suggested that he was too deferential to the front office’s analytically driven decisions, which partially contributed to the poor state of the clubhouse when he left.

The antithesis of Gabe Kapler, in many ways, is Skip Schumaker. Despite being even less experienced than Kapler, with only two seasons at the helm of the Miami Marlins, Schumaker won the NL Manager of the Year award in his very first season. Guiding the underdog Marlins to an 84-78 record and a playoff berth, the 2023 Marlins were known for being clutch performers - they were outscored on the season by 57 games but made the postseason on the strength of a 33-14 record in one-run games (.702 winning percentage).

While the Marlins were eventually eliminated in the NL Wild Card round by divisional rival Philadelphia (who went on to lose the World Series to the Astros), it cemented the first-time manager as one of the game’s rising stars in the coaching ranks. Amidst a change in the front office after the season, where General Manager Kim Ng resigned rather than accept a demotion, he requested the Marlins restructure his contract to decline his 2025 club option and eventually departed the team two games before the season ended to handle a family matter.

His managerial style can best be described as rooted in fundamentals and attention to detail, eschewing the heavy use of analytics in favor of situational baseball.

While there will be several candidates for Atlanta’s open position, if the team were to go towards an experienced manager, these are the two names that have been bandied about.³

Option 2: An “Atlanta man” from the Bobby Cox tree

Brian Snitker has been part of the Atlanta organization for 49 years, having gotten his first coaching job from none other than Hank Aaron and eventually ending up as Bobby Cox’s third base coach.

There are two popular candidates who could, in some way, continue the Bobby Cox legacy in Atlanta: Walt Weiss and Mark DeRosa.

Weiss is Atlanta’s current base coach, having taken the job in 2017 after leaving his role as manager of the Colorado Rockies in 2016. While he never coached with Cox, who retired in 2010, he played for him - Weiss signed with Atlanta in December 1997 and became the team’s starting shortstop. He made the 1998 All-Star Team (his only All-Star selection) by hitting .280 before eventually losing the starting role to rookie Rafael Furcal in 2000, his final season before retiring.

Elevating Weiss to the head role would likely signal that Atlanta is looking for continuity among the coaching staff, with expectations that they will also retain pitching coach Rick Kranitz, hitting coach Tim Hyers, and assistant coach Eddie Perez.

But there’s another option from the same coaching tree - Mark DeRosa. Another former player under Cox, DeRosa was the team’s 7th round pick in 1996 and debuted in 1998, ultimately spending seven seasons in Atlanta and hitting .266 before departing in free agency for the Texas Rangers at the age of 30 in 2005.

While Derosa, who is currently an MLB Network personality, would bring both an outside voice and a connection to the Cox teams of old, he is lacking in managing experience so far in his career. He led Team USA to a silver medal in 2023’s World Baseball Classic and has been named manager of the 2026 squad, but that’s the extent of his high-level managing experience.

Does Atlanta feel comfortable giving the job to a former player with exactly seven games as a coach in his career?⁴

Luckily, there’s another option that has all the experience you could want.

Option 3: The veteran coach who AA already knows

John Gibbons coached twice in Toronto; managing from 2004-2008, he was dismissed so that the Blue Jays could bring in former manager Cito Gaston. In November of 2012, with Alex Anthopoulos now running the show in Toronto, Gibbons was re-hired as manager and coached for six more seasons, finishing his eleven-year tenure with a record of 793-789.

Interestingly, Anthopoulos hired Gibbons again after he came to Atlanta, giving the former manager a prominent role in the revamped Braves scouting department in 2020. Gibbons worked for three years with Atlanta before taking a role as bench coach for the New York Mets, a role he still holds today.

It is an uninspiring choice, especially to a fanbase that is looking for a ‘big name’ to come in and fix the team, but one that the front office would likely have full faith and confidence in.

But what if I told you there was another, even better option? One that has elements of all three potential paths for the new manager?

Option 4: The man who covers all the bases

Bainbridge, GA native David Ross ‘bridges’ all of these potential options.⁵ Entering major league baseball from nearby Auburn University after being picked by the Dodgers in the 7th round of the 1998 MLB Draft, Ross spent fifteen years in Major League Baseball. Catching for seven different teams, Ross played in seven postseasons and won the World Series twice, with Boston in 2013 and with the Cubs in 2016. He was revered as a veteran leader, with several key members of the 2016 Cubs talking about the positive impact “Grandpa Rossy” had on the clubhouse.

So, a former player (and catcher, who make the best managers) who spent time in Atlanta and has a wealth of postseason experience. Check.

He then became manager of those very same Cubs, leading the club for 546 games from 2020-2023 before being unceremoniously replaced by Craig Counsell, who the Cubs poached away from the divisional rival Milwaukee Brewers with a record five-year, $40M contract.

So he’s experienced in the head chair, having gotten his “growing pains” out of the way. Check.

He also has a connection to Atlanta, having played for the Braves from 2009-2012 under both Bobby Cox and Fredi Gonzalez, including going 3-4 with a homer and two RBI in Atlanta’s disastrous 2012 NL Wild Card loss⁶ to the St. Louis Cardinals. Check.

It should be Ross

If you think about the ideal candidate, David Ross fulfills the requirements of almost every single stakeholder in this process.

For the players, he’s one of them, having placed recently enough that he understands the mental and physical grind associated with a Major League season in a sport that, at least for the hitters, is based on at least 70% failures for all but the best in the game.

For the front office, he’s played recently enough that he understands the value of and how to use the analytical information that the team can generate. Kapler is incredibly focused on analytics, while Schumaker mostly eschews them. Ross is in the middle, a former catcher who can absorb the info, determine what is important and what isn’t, and understand how to disseminate that to the rest of the coaching staff and players in a way that is effective without being overwhelming.

For Braves Country, he has that connection to Bobby Cox and the Braves of old without representing “running it back”, which some fans have complained about if Weiss were to be installed as the manager.

I’m curious to see which way Atlanta goes here…but I know who I’d hire, if given a choice.

1. By contrast, Atlanta has used 87 unique lineups this season and in their magical 2023 season, just 80 (with the two most used being 46 and 36 times each, only differing at catcher).

2. The tattoo was intentionally placed on the hand for visibility; it’s a tribute to his deceased father, who died of Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia in late 2020.

3. Out of deference to major league managers who are still under contract, I don’t want to get into possible candidates who are currently employed with other clubs.

4. Team USA went 5-2 in the tournament, losing in the finals to Shohei Ohtani’s Samurai Japan.

5. I had to make the pun

6. Yes, the infamous infield fly rule game. Yes, I’m still mad about it, too.