The Braves announced Tuesday morning that they’ve exercised a club option for the 2024 season on manager Brian Snitker. He was already under contract through the 2023 campaign after signing an extension this past February, but he’s now on a guaranteed contract for the next three years.
Snitker celebrated his 66th birthday during the 2021 postseason and, not long after, celebrated the Braves’ first World Series victory in more than two decades. First named manager an interim basis during the 2016 season after Atlanta dismissed Fredi Gonzalez, Snitker quickly cemented himself in that role and shed the “interim” tag. He’s since proven himself to a pair of front-office regimes and signed a trio of short-term extensions under two different general managers. With Tuesday’s announcement, he won’t need to think about his next contract for at least a couple years.
The Braves went 72-90 in Snitker’s first full season on the job, in 2017. Since then, he’s guided the team not only to a winning record but to a division championship in each of the past four seasons. This year’s World Series roster may not have been the most talented group Snitker has ever overseen — star outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. and righty Mike Soroka were both shelved due to injury — but that only makes the win all the more impressive.
Snitker has spent more than four decades in the Braves organization. During his time with the club, he’s managed seven different minor-league affiliates in addition to a pair of stints as the MLB bullpen coach and a pair of stints as the MLB third base coach. He was named 2018 National League Manager of the Year in his second full season on the job, and he’s finished fourth or better in each of the three seasons since.
While the World Series victory was, in many ways, the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of work for Snitker, his focus will now shift to defending that World Series crown and bringing home another championship to Atlanta over the next three seasons.
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