Dissecting Braves Manager Search After Walt Weiss Intro

After a month of waiting to hear who the Atlanta Braves manager would be, they chose to hire from within. Walt Weiss, a longtime speculative candidate, won the job. He gets another chance to manage. 

In theory, this shouldn’t have been a surprise choice. But after all the waiting, an expectation developed that an external hire was coming. Whether it was David Ross, Mark DeRosa, John Gibbons, George Lombard or Danny Lehmann, each name brought about a different indication. 

Then, they named Weiss. It’s understandable why many are questioning why they waited so long. This is the type of choice that could have been made almost immediately. 

The best we can do is try to reflect on the situation and dissect some comments to see what we can learn about it. Anthopoulos was broad and careful with his choice of wording. He didn’t name anyone and wouldn’t even give an idea of how many candidates were interviewed, outside of there being a lot of calls. 

Atlanta Braves on SI currently has no intel on who could have actually been spoken to. It was that under lock and key. Most names were speculative, and candidates were always worded to be as such for that reason. 

It’s possible that a reason it took as long as it did to pick Weiss was truly because they sat and waited for Snitker to make a decision. It’s hard to believe there wasn’t a list like Anthopoulos indicated, but if you aren’t fully prepared for the search at the time a decision is made, it will take time. If the discussion had started sooner, maybe Weiss would have been named earlier. 

However, there is no reason not to look at all options. Weiss could have been the frontrunner the whole time, but they had to see if he truly was the best candidate. Only calling other candidates will help with that. 

Anthopoulos made it sound like he was leaning toward Weiss by the time the World Series was wrapping up. It’s possible that speculative candidates, such as Lehmann, got calls at the last minute, but we just don’t know for certain. 

Phone calls were made on Saturday and Monday ahead of the decision. Anthopoulos indicated that some of those were to get an idea of Weiss as a candidate to help build confidence in the decision. 

"Look, I knew Walt, but I only knew him to a certain level, right?" he said. "I'm not down there working with him day in and day out, and it wasn't in the role of managers." 

It sounds absurd that someone who has been with the team since 2018 requires that effort of getting to know better, but in all fairness, we all know people at the office that we don’t actually know well. When you gear up to potentially work with them closely, you’re going to want to see if this is someone you can work with and who makes sense in other ways for a certain role. 

If a guess had to be made for who Anthopoulos spoke to about Weiss, one of them is probably Brian Snitker, who has worked with Weiss for years now. There is a decent chance the other is Chipper Jones, who is a former teammate of Weiss and was a fan of the hiring. Those are two logical names since they would have a strong influence.

Once Anthopoulos got to know Weiss better than he already did, he likely considered how the bench coach already knows the organization and figured the best fit was already in-house. 

Again, there is a lot we don’t know, and we might never know. However, some logical conclusions can be drawn based on the little that we know to figure out why it took as long as it did, and why Weiss prevailed. 

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