Rumored Braves manager target not viewed as an option

DeRosa is a popular name for a few reasons. He’s a young candidate with strong connections to Atlanta, where he came up as a player, and he’s the current manager for Team USA. It feels like a natural transition for him to eventually end up in a big-league dugout, and the Braves are an organization that typically likes to hire people familiar with the franchise.

But as I’ve said repeatedly — and as Chipper Jones put it best — nobody really knows what Alex Anthopoulos is thinking. This is his first time hiring a manager as the Braves’ general manager, and what the team has done in the past has no bearing on what’s happening right now.

“We don’t know what Alex is thinking,” Jones said. “He’s never had to do this before. Is he going to get somebody from the outside? Is he going to get somebody with very little experience? Is he going to get a bunch of experience? Is it going to be old school? Is it going to be a Braves lineage guy? Nobody knows.”

It’s very likely that whoever the Braves hire won’t be anyone the national media expected when this process began.