Walt Weiss Won The Press Conference
New Atlanta Braves manager Walt Weiss struck the perfect blend between respecting the work of his predecessor and establishing that he's a different type of leader
The Atlanta Braves have officially introduced Walt Weiss as the organization’s 49th manager.
The team’s bench coach for the last eight seasons, Weiss was previously manager of the Colorado Rockies after a fourteen-year playing career, including three seasons (and one All-Star selection) in Atlanta with the Braves under Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox.
President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos introduced Weiss as the manager to the media on Tuesday morning. Let’s talk about it.
Don’t hold Colorado against him
One of the interesting complaints I’ve seen about Weiss is that he was not a very good manager in Colorado.
He explained that the reason for that is that he wasn’t an active coach when he got the job. Well, an active baseball coach, that is. After he retired as a player, he did some work for Colorado’s front office but was coaching his son’s high school football team when he got a call asking him to interview for the open managerial job. So he took the interview, intending for it to be merely some experience as he looked to get back into the game after four years away…and then got the job.
He learned a lot through the experience, but he is clearly a different coach now than he was over a decade ago. “Where were you 12 years ago? If you haven’t become a little wiser, you need to check yourself.”
In addition to having a much better roster in Atlanta than he did in Colorado, one of the major hurdles he faced with the Rockies was the learning curve of getting to know his players. Weiss remarked that “it takes the better part of a year to truly understand your team,” explaining that learning their motivations, their body language, how they respond to specific situations, etc is a process. But that’s not an issue in Atlanta.
“The fact I’ve been here and a lot of those things are already established, we can hit the ground running.” And that’s ultimately the plan here, I think. This is a veteran-laden team that intends to get back to contending for the World Series after a difficult season. Keeping the continuity of a known quantity who already has relationships with the roster (including, reportedly, a very close relationship with Ronald Acuña Jr.) is the best way to quickly push this team right back into the NL pennant conversation.
And Weiss expects to be back in that NL pennant convo, because that’s the standard in Atlanta. “I understand the impact of this Braves brand, the history of this brand and how important it is to a lot of people. […] This venue we play in, the history here, the success, the Hall of Famers, and ultimately the people. The standards are high, the expectations are high, and that’s a good thing. It means you’re doing something right.”
His embrace of analytics
One of the first questions was about his approach towards analytics and how open he was to that advanced information. I really appreciated his answer here and I’m going to print it almost entirely in full.
“Look, I’ve evolved with the game. I think if you don’t, you’re a fool. My philosophy is: why would anybody, especially in a position of leadership, turn their back on information? And Alex has done a great job and his team has done a great job of blending the wisdom that comes from being in uniform for a number of years and the information that’s available to us today and the technology that’s available to us today. So, I’m very curious when it comes to the information. I want it. And then there’s a point where you got to put context to it. I always say there’s an art and a science to everything. The information gathering is the science part of it, and the art is putting context to it in the dugout and making it practical and pragmatic over the course of a nine-inning game. So yeah, I think you have to evolve. The game has changed, like I said, and you’d be a fool not to evolve with the game.”
One of the major complaints with Brian Snitker was his seemingly disregard of matchup information when he went to the bullpen or made a lineup - he was rigid with his lineup choices based on handedness, even if the information dictated otherwise (letting the lefty Drake Baldwin face a lefty pitcher, for example), but then virtually ignored handedness with his bullpen decisions, instead sticking to a preordained pitching plan for the evening.
It sure sounds to me like Walt Weiss won’t make that same mistake. He mentioned something about the difference in his personality and Snitker’s a little later in the presser, explaining that Snitker was very patient and he was…not. “My personality is always to hurry up and get in there and fix things. Watching Snit have a feel for the timing of when to interject was very valuable for me,” but it still feels like there might be a bit more haste or willingness to make changes earlier in a failing process instead of exhibiting Snitker’s trademark extreme patience with a slumping hitter or a struggling starter.
Asked a vague follow-up later, Weiss discussed his appreciation for the setup Atlanta currently has. “We have a great team that works with Alex and works with us, and those relationships are rock solid and deep-rooted and so there’s a lot of trust there. I value the information that I get from our team upstairs,” He explained that he’s always looking for ways to improve his use of analytics, saying that he’s “very open and always very curious to get better in that realm.”
AA on the process
Despite repeated questions, Anthopoulos wouldn’t give any sort of exact figures on how many candidates were interviewed or on their list, merely explaining that they were so “inundated” with interest that it was almost overwhelming.
He did clarify, however, the timing of this hire and how it all came together, and the answer was: quickly. “I had some conversations on Saturday that really impacted me and (was) still chewing on it and going through stuff and ultimately had a few more that I needed to have on Monday just to make sure that I checked all those boxes.”
He finished up the last bit of vetting on Monday morning, explaining that he was already leaning towards Weiss but wanted to talk to some people who were “around him a little bit more than anybody else that I had significant faith and trust in what they had to say. I told them I was leaning in that direction but wanted to make sure that there wasn’t anything that I missed and they both stamped it in a lot of ways.” He also ran it by Chairman Terry McGuirk on Monday, breaking down the thought process, the background work, etc, as an extra check on his process. He reiterated, however, that it was his decision in the end, however, not anyone else’s. “This was my choice and this was the way I wanted to go. […] It’s a big role, it’s a big responsibility, like Walt talked about.”
AA did confirm that they did not care whether or not it was an internal or external hire, the goal was to find the right person for the job and they believe they did. “This is the third time I’ve done this. Two other times I’ve gone external and never had a thought process of ‘it needs to be internal’. It’s the best person you know, period. […] You need the right person, the right individual, no matter where they come from. And he stood out as the right man for the job.”
On pending staff changes
The question was asked towards the end of the press conference about if the staff would be changing, and there is nothing to share about that right now. “This was pretty quick, and that’s a conversation that we’re going to continue to have, so we don’t have anything to announce today.”
AA explained that staff changes were part of the interview with all of the candidates, including Weiss, and both he and AA have ideas on what they wants to do with the staff. Hopefully, that gets resolved soon. “Those are priority things that we’re going to work through in the next little bit. So, we don’t have anything today, but that’s definitely a front-burner priority for us.”
For those of you who missed the press conference, here’s a link to the presser as carried by FanDuel Sports Network, official broadcaster of the Atlanta Braves.