Clippings Wednesday, May 18, 2016 Braves.com

Gonzalez dismissed as of Braves

Snitker promoted from -A to be interim skipper

By Mark Bowman / MLB.com | @mlbbowman | 12:24 AM ET

PITTSBURGH -- Experiencing their worst start to a season in more than 100 years, the Braves made their first in-season managerial change in more than a quarter century on Tuesday, relieving Fredi Gonzalez of his duties and elevating Triple-A Gwinnett manager to interim manager.

"As we got into and opened the season with the bad start, we wanted to keep providing opportunities to see if we could turn this thing around," Braves president of baseball operations said before Atlanta's 12-9 loss on Tuesday. "It obviously didn't look like it was going to happen. [Braves general manager ] and I started talking about this four or five days ago and saying, 'How much longer do you want to wait?'"

The Braves initially discussed dismissing Gonzalez during their 0-9 start to the season and again during an eight-game losing streak during the latter part of April. Hart and Coppolella opted to hold off while accounting for 's month-long stint on the disabled list and the reality that many of their offseason roster decisions had not gone according to plan and left Gonzalez with a flawed roster.

"This isn't Fredi's fault," Coppolella said. "If you really want to have it laid at anyone's hands, it can be at mine and at [Hart's]. When we spoke to Fredi, it was time for a new voice and time for a change. We're hoping the change will spur this team. We don't feel like this season is over. We feel like there is a lot of baseball left to play and we can play our best baseball yet."

The Braves also dismissed bench , who had served in that capacity for Gonzalez dating back to their time together with the Marlins from 2007-10. will become the bench coach. Pendelton's previous duties as first-base coach will be filled by Eddie Perez, whose previous role as bullpen coach will be filled by , who had been Gwinnett's pitching coach.

Gonzalez remained a loyal company man as his rosters were weakened by the massive rebuild the Braves began last year. But Hart and Coppolella began to recently sense frustration from the veteran manager, who went 434-413 during his tenure as Atlanta's skipper.

"It's never good to go through a change like this during a season," Braves first baseman said. "It's hard to put into words. He's a good man. Everybody loves him around here. I can't find a person to say a bad word about him. But we've had a couple of tough years and baseball is a business. Unfortunately, change was the way to go, I guess. We've got to abide by it, go out there and start winning ballgames now."

This marked the first time the Braves made an in-season managerial change since replaced midway through the 1990 season.

Snitker was actually informed of the decision on Monday morning, a few hours before he prepared to manage his last game with Gwinnett. Gonzalez did not learn of the decision until late Monday night, shortly after the Braves fell to 9-28 with a series-opening loss to the Pirates at PNC Park.

"A bad start is not laid at the foot of Fredi Gonzalez," Hart said. "We all assume a lot of responsibility for how this club has gotten off to this kind of start. But with that being said, we certainly believe we're better than what we've played."

While this bad start certainly halted the original plan to at least allow Gonzalez to manage through the end of this season, the ultimate decision was based on the fact that the Braves had determined Gonzalez was not the man they wanted serving as the team's manager beyond this year, when the club's talent-rich prospect crop could significantly influence the team's bid to become consistently competitive again.

Gonzalez accepted the tough task of becoming Cox's successor at the end of the 2010 season and had the team in position to reach the postseason in 2011 before his rotation was decimated by 's decline and injuries suffered by and Tommy Hanson. The Braves earned a Wild Card bid in 2012 and won the East in 2013. "Sometimes, change is a good thing," Braves right fielder Nick Markakis said. "Sometimes, it's a bad thing. You never know until you try. [Hart and Coppolella] thought it was the time and they're trying to do what is best for us. I think we all understand that and we all see that."

Early candidates to be Braves' next manager

Snitker, Perez and Pendleton among in-house options

By Mark Bowman / MLB.com | @mlbbowman | May 17th, 2016

PITTSBURGH -- As Brian Snitker spends the remainder of this season as their interim manager, the Braves will continue to evaluate Eddie Perez, Terry Pendleton plus some external candidates who might be deemed fit to serve as the club's next long-term manager.

Upon relieving Fredi Gonzalez of his managerial duties on Tuesday, the Braves elevated Snitker from his role as Triple-A Gwinnett's manager. It's a well-deserved opportunity for the 60-year-old suburban Atlanta native who has been a part of Atlanta's organization as a player, coach and Minor League manager since 1977.

But Snitker's reign could end at the conclusion of this season as the Braves determine who is best suited to guide the team through the next era, when the club's talent-rich prospect crop has the potential to make the organization consistent postseason contenders once again.

The Braves discussed replacing Gonzalez with either Perez or Pendleton for the remainder of this season. But they instead elevated their roles on the coaching staff while accounting for the possibility that both could tarnish their future managerial hopes if the team continues to play like it has through the season's first six weeks.

"There were four or five names that we talked about in-house, and I think when we get through this season, we will certainly go through that list again, as well as those who might be outside the organization, to see what is the best fit for us long term," Braves general manager John Coppolella said. "It's a very important hire for us."

Perez, Pendleton and former Brave and current MLB Network analyst Mark DeRosa stand as the early favorites to become Atlanta's manager. DeRosa has never managed, but the suburban Atlanta resident has been routinely mentioned as a potential candidate since the end of the 2015 campaign.

Though former Padres manager has been mentioned by some, the Braves have never provided any indication that he is currently viewed as a potential candidate.

Snitker chose Pendleton to serve as his bench coach, and in doing so, he provided the former National League MVP a role in which he can better show his ability to serve as a manager. Pendleton has previously served as Atlanta's hitting coach and first-base coach.

Perez assumed his new role on Monday, vacating his position as Atlanta's bullpen coach to become the first-base coach. The former has managed in the Venezuelan Winter League and guided his native nation to the Caribbean Series this year.

Though Snitker has significantly influenced the Braves organization over the past 40 years, he has never been deemed a long-term managerial candidate. But Atlanta outfielder likens this situation to the one he experienced while playing with the Phillies last year.

When Pete Mackanin replaced as the Phillies' interim manager midway through last season, he was also viewed as a short-term fix. But Mackanin received a two-year deal and the Phillies have continued to exceed expectations under his direction.

"[Snitker] will be here for the rest of the year, and then at that point, we'll see if we want to stay there or if it will be a full-out search," Coppolella said.

Interim skipper Snitker a longtime Brave

60-year-old has been part of the organization since 1977

By Mark Bowman / MLB.com | @mlbbowman | 12:19 AM ET

PITTSBURGH -- When Brian Snitker received a call from Braves general manager John Coppolella early Monday morning, he simply assumed he would be told to inform one of his Triple-A Gwinnett players that he had been promoted to the big league level. But to his astonishment, he quickly learned he was the one receiving a quite unexpected promotion.

Upon deciding to relieve Fredi Gonzalez of his managerial duties, the Braves determined that they would be best served utilizing Snitker as interim manager over the remainder of this season. The 60-year-old suburban Atlanta resident has served as player, coach and Minor League manager in the organization dating back to 1977. But at this stage of his career, he certainly did not anticipate gaining the opportunity to fulfill the dream of serving as a big league manager, even on an interim basis.

"It's bittersweet because Fredi's a good friend of mine," Snitker said before the Braves lost, 12-9, on Tuesday. "We went through a lot together here and he's a good man. But it's part of what we do here. It's part of the business. Unfortunately, when things go like they have been, somebody has to go. I'm excited and I'm honored John Coppolella and [Braves president of baseball operations] John Hart entrusted me with this job."

Snitker most recently served on Atlanta's coaching staff as the third-base coach from 2007-13. He became Gwinnett's manager when former Braves general manager hired Doug Dascenzo to serve as Gonzalez's third-base coach in 2014.

"He's somebody who can really bring back the Braves' way," Coppolella said. "He's been here for 40 years. Our whole staff has worked with him at some point. They all know him really well. We felt this was a man who could get the right message to our players and our staff at a real tough time."

The Braves will also evaluate Terry Pendleton, Eddie Perez, Mark DeRosa and others when it comes time to determine who is best suited to fill their managerial role on a long-term basis. But as they entered Tuesday with a 9-28 record, the Braves felt the current responsibilities could be best served by Snitker, who has managed 2,571 games at the Minor League level.

"It's a baseball game," Snitker said. "It's a new situation for me, obviously. It's a different flow. It will take me some time to get into the routine of what you do here because it is different. I told the players I just got to live it for a while. I'm going to sit here and watch. I want to watch the club play and then see where we go from there."

As Snitker addressed the Braves before Tuesday's game, he was comforted to look around the clubhouse and realize that he had managed more than half of the members of Atlanta's current roster at some point in the Minors.

"It made me feel relaxed and confident in what we're trying to do," Snitker said. "We've got some good players in there. We have a chance to hopefully turn the page and become a good club. That's what we're striving for."

Braves battle but come up short vs. Bucs

By Adam Berry and Mark Bowman / MLB.com | 1:50 AM ET

PITTSBURGH -- After starting the night with a nine- lead, the Pirates wound up needing the back end of their bullpen to close out a 12-9 win over the Braves on Tuesday at PNC Park.

The Bucs' lineup did its part with a season-high 21 hits and a season-high-tying 12 runs. Andrew McCutchen, Gregory Polanco and Francisco Cervelli powered the offense with three hits apiece. But starter Juan Nicasio permitted five runs (three earned) in five innings, Ryan Vogelsong was charged with three runs and Arquimedes Caminero gave up a homer to , the only batter he faced in the seventh.

"They weren't stopping, so we needed to continue as well to create separation, keep a gap," Pirates manager said. "Everybody threw something in from one through nine. It was definitely a team effort, and we needed all of it."

That led the Pirates to summon their top three relievers -- Neftali Feliz, Tony Watsonand closer Mark Melancon -- to finish a game they once led 9- 0. Hurdle had told Melancon they were going to do "everything they could to stay away from him" after using him on back-to-back days. But there Melancon was, picking up his 13th at the end of the night.

"The perception of the game in front of you is like playing a golf course. It's the hole you're playing that day," Hurdle said. "Expectations more often than not lead to resentments. Just let the game play. Manage it accordingly."

In his first inning on the job, Braves interim manager Brian Snitker watched the Pirates pound out seven runs on seven hits off rookie right- hander Aaron Blair. Pittsburgh added two more runs in the second inning, but Atlanta began to climb back in the game. Smith the first of his two homers, both two-run shots to right field, in a three-run third inning. The Braves and Pirates each put up a pair of runs in the fifth; Atlanta tacked on another in the sixth and three more in the seventh against Pittsburgh's bullpen.

"I know [bench coach Terry Pendleton] said, 'Snit, the record is not good, but these guys don't quit, they just keep fighting,'" said Snitker, who will manage the rest of the season after Fredi Gonzalez was dismissed. "That's exactly what they did. It was really cool to see ... I liked what I saw. There was energy in the dugout. I wish we would have won the game."

MOMENTS THAT MATTERED Quick strike: The Pirates sent 11 men to the plate to face Blair in their seven-run first inning. Nicasio picked up his first RBI since 2014 with a single to right field, John Jaso doubled home two more and McCutchen punctuated the inning with an RBI single to left. It was the first time the Pirates scored seven runs in the first inning at home since plating nine against the Brewers on July 20, 2010.

"It's fun to watch," Hurdle said. "They kind of feed off one another." Squandered opportunities: Along with benefiting from Smith's first multi-homer game, the Braves tallied season highs in hits (15) and runs (nine). But they also squandered two prime opportunities to complete their comeback bid. Kelly Johnson grounded into a play with the bases loaded to end the three-run third inning. The Braves loaded the bases again in the sixth with one out. But Vogelsong ended this threat by striking out Freddie Freeman and inducing A.J. Pierzynski's inning-ending groundout.

No. 1 for No. 59: After striking out in his Major League debut on Monday, Alen Hanson picked up his first big league hit in the fifth inning. Pinch- hitting for Nicasio, Hanson knocked an single past diving Gordon Beckham. The Bucs' No. 10 prospect showed off his speed, going first to third on Ian Krol's errant pickoff throw. Hanson scored his first run two batters later, coming home on McCutchen's single to right field.

Hanson kept the baseball, planning to send it to his mother -- who was so excited by the news of his Major League debut that she accidentally hung up the phone on him -- as a gift.

"This has been a long promise that I've had to my mom, to play in the big leagues. To be able to send her that as a gift, to say, 'Mom, I made it,'" Hanson said through interpreter Mike Gonzalez. "I don't think she's going to hang up. ... She's ready for the phone call."

QUOTABLE "You guys forget I managed in Colorado for eight years." -- Hurdle, asked about managing such a high-scoring game

SOUND SMART WITH YOUR FRIENDS Blair became the first Braves and the 20th in MLB history to allow at least nine earned runs and nine hits while completing 1 1/3 or fewer innings.

The Braves have lost three of the past four games in which they have tallied at least nine runs and 15 hits. Before this four-game stretch, they had been 281-19 in such games in Atlanta history (dating back to 1966).

WHAT'S NEXT Braves: Julio Teheran will be bidding for his first win of the season when this four-game series continues on Wednesday at 7:05 p.m. ET. Teheran has posted a 1.44 ERA and limited opponents to a .202 batting average over his past five starts.

Pirates: Left-hander will try to get back on track after a rough start against the Cubs. Liriano, Pittsburgh's Opening Day starter, is 3-2 with a 4.99 ERA and a National League-leading 23 walks in seven starts.

Mighty Mallex posts first multi-homer game

Rookie center fielder hits a pair of two-run shots in Braves' loss to Pirates

By Mark Bowman / MLB.com | @mlbbowman | 1:17 AM ET

PITTSBURGH -- As Mallex Smith progressed through the Braves' Minor League levels last year, he looked like Billy Hamilton with shoulders. Though he might be a tick slower than the fleet-footed Reds outfielder, Smith has already provided strong indication he has the greater offensive potential and the ability to occasionally produce some unexpected power.

After the Braves encountered an early nine-run deficit on Tuesday night at PNC Park, Smith drilled a pair of two-run homers that fueled a comeback bid that fell short in a 12-9 loss to the Pirates. The rookie outfielder has recorded three home runs through the first 31 games of his career, or one more than he hit while combining to tally 484 at-bats with Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett last year.

"I'll hit every single one of my home runs in my life by accident," Smith said. "I'll stick to my game and know who I am as a player."

Though he stands with Freddie Freeman as the only Braves who have hit more than one this year, Smith knows that his primary value is what he can provide in the field and on the basepaths. He entered Tuesday tied for the lead among all Major League center fielders with eight Defensive Runs Saved.

But over the past couple of weeks, Smith has shown that he can impress with more than just his legs. Since hitting .136 with a .445 OPS through his first 15 games with Atlanta, the 23-year-old has batted .347 with a .993 OPS over the 16 games that have followed.

"He's still rough around the edges," Braves interim manager Brian Snitker said. "The kid is a ballplayer. I've never seen the kid take the negative things we go through negatively. His eyes are always wide open and his ears are always wide open on everything you say. That ceiling is pretty high on that kid. He's learning to play at the Major League level. He's not the first to do that. I see him just keep growing."

Snitker experienced his first game as a big league manager on Tuesday after the Braves dismissed Fredi Gonzalez. In the process, he was reminded of how much Smith has grown since he began managing him with Gwinnett during the second half of last year.

Smith struggled through his first few weeks with Gwinnett and then took off, much like he has as he's better acquainted himself to the big league scene over the past few weeks. "I think personally with time, I get better. It's a new level," Smith said. "When I got up to Triple-A, I struggled for a month. This is where the best of the best is at. So, why wouldn't I think I would struggle here? Just as time progresses, I get used to seeing everything and the flow of the game."

Liriano to start as Bucs seek 4th straight win

By Mark Bowman / MLB.com | May 17th, 2016

Now that the Pirates have concluded a rough stretch that included five losses against the division-rival Cubs, they are attempting to take advantage of the opportunity to add to the struggles the Braves have experienced throughout this season.

After losing Monday night's series opener at PNC Park, the Braves fired manager Fredi Gonzalez and replaced him with interim manager Brian Snitker, who had been serving as Triple-A Gwinnett's skipper. Snitker's first game as a big league manager ended up as a loss, although the Braves did battle back from a 9-0 deficit to force Pittsburgh to go to closer Mark Melancon in the ninth.

When this four-game series continues on Wednesday night, the Pirates will send Francisco Liriano to the mound to face Julio Teheran. Liriano had posted a 3.60 ERA through his first six starts before allowing the Cubs eight earned runs in 4 2/3 innings on Friday.

Teheran has posted a 1.44 ERA and limited opponents to a .202 batting average over his past five starts, but he remains winless through eight outings for the Braves, who have lost 29 of their first 38 games.

Things to know about this game

• The Pirates have gone 1-5 against the Cubs and 20-12 against all other opponents this season.

• After not recording a triple through their first 34 games, the Braves have recorded one in three of their past four games. Bud Norris' triple on Tuesday was the first recorded by a Braves pitcher since Jair Jurrjens in 2008.

• Melancon's 97 saves since the start of the 2014 season are second among all Major League behind Trevor Rosenthal (100). Melancon's 93.3 save percentage (97-for-104) in that time ranks second behind Aroldis Chapman's 93.5 percent success rate (72-for-77).

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gonzalez first Braves manager fired since 1990

By David O'Brien - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PITTSBURGH — The Braves fired manager Fredi Gonzalez on Tuesday, after one of the worst half-seasons in the franchise’s 140-year history was followed by its worst start in more than a century. They have a major league-worst 9-28 record.

“A bad start is not just laid at the feet of Fredi Gonzalez,” Braves president of baseball operations John Hart said. “I mean, we all assume a lot of responsibility for how this club has gotten off to this kind of a start. But with that said, we do think we’re certainly better than what we’ve played.”

Brian Snitker will move up from his Triple-A Gwinnett managerial position to serve as interim Braves manager. Gonzalez learned he had been fired late Monday, but an announcement wasn’t made until Tuesday afternoon.

Braves bench coach Carlos Tosca, Gonzalez’s longtime right-hand man in Miami and Atlanta, also was fired, and first-base coach Terry Pendleton will replace him as bench coach. Eddie Perez moves from bullpen coach to first-base coach, and Gwinnett pitching coach Marty Reed will move up to fill Perez’s former position.

Pendleton and Perez are expected to be considered along with outside candidates for the permanent managerial job when the Braves hire a replacement.

“(Snitker) will be here for the rest of the year, and then at that point we’ll see if we want to stay there or if there will be a full-out search,” Braves general manager John Copolella said.

Although it’s widely known that the Braves are in the midst of a rebuilding effort that gutted the major league team while fortifying the minor league system, Gonzalez had long been a lightning rod for criticism from fans and some media members, and he ultimately paid the price for the team’s dismal performance.

Gonzalez, 52, was in his sixth season as Braves manager after replacing his mentor, Bobby Cox, when the legendary Braves manager retired after the 2010 season. He is the first Braves manager fired since Russ Nixon was dumped in June 1990 and replaced by Cox. He has a 710-692 record in 10 seasons as a major league manager, including 434-413 with the Braves.

“This isn’t Fredi’s fault. No one is saying it’s Fredi’s fault,” Coppolella said. “If you want to really have it laid at anybody’s hands, it can be at mine and at John (Hart’s).”

But, Coppolella said, “It was time for a new voice and time for a change. I hope that the change will spark this team. There’s still 4 1/2 months left. It’s something where we didn’t feel like this season’s over. We feel like we’ve got a lot of baseball left to play, and we can play our best baseball of the season yet.”

Gonzalez and his coaches received contract extensions in July 2015 for the 2016 season, with club options for 2017. Hart was asked if there was any consideration of letting Gonzalez finish the rest of this season and decline his 2017 option, rather than fire him midseason.

“Yeah, we did discuss that as well,” he said. “But at a certain point we had, in our own minds, made the decision that we were going to look for another manager next year. And I don’t know that that was fair to Fredi. We’re all too close, and it was wearing on him, how we were playing. So we just thought that this was the right thing to do.”

There was considerable criticism of Gonzalez during much of his time as Braves manager, despite the fact his teams won 89, 94 and 96 games in his first three seasons through 2013 and a title in 2013, their first division title since 2005.

The Braves were 82 games over .500 (296-214) during his first three-plus seasons as manager through a 17-7 start in 2014. But they were 62-76 the rest of that season and, after a surprising 42-42 start in 2015, the Braves spiraled during an injury- and trade-plagued second half to finish 67-95, the Braves’ worst record since 1990.

Gonzalez served as third-base coach on Cox’s staff for four seasons through 2006, then got his first major league managerial job with the Marlins. The National League Manager of the Year in 2008, Gonzalez had a 276-279 record in 3 1/2 seasons with the Marlins before he was fired by a notoriously fickle owner in June 2010.

While Gonzalez often was second-guessed during his first three seasons in Atlanta, it wasn’t until the disappointing 2014 season when speculation about his job status really began to heat up. But near the end of that season, the Braves fired general manager Frank Wren and kept Gonzalez.

Hart was promoted from senior adviser to president of baseball operations, with assistant GM Coppolella as his top lieutenant (promoted to GM a year later). The two Johns began a dizzying amount of trades after the 2014 season, moves designed to build for the future by acquiring high-level prospects, often at the expense of the current major league team.

“We recognize this we’re in the middle of a rebuild, and we’ve got so many great things that are happening, but we didn’t spend a lot of money on this club this winter,” Hart said. “We sort of took some chances on some guys coming along. But at some point, you have to have a product out there that’s going to be respectable, and we just think that there’s more in it and there’s a lot of season left.”

In Gonzalez’s first season as Braves manager in 2011, they had a 10 1/2-game lead over St. Louis in the wild-card standings in late August, and still held an 8 1/2-game lead in early September. But the Braves produced one of baseball’s worst-ever collapses, going 9-18 in September and missing the postseason.

They came back in 2012 with a 94-68 record and the top seed in the Wild Card game, but the Braves lost at in the infamous “infield fly rule” game against St. Louis.

The Braves were 96-66 and NL East champions in 2013, then lost the division series against the Dodgers, blowing a 3-2 lead in the decisive Game 4 when Gonzalez made a decision that he never would live down with some critics.

Juan Uribe hit a two-run homer off reliever David Carpenter with no outs in the eighth inning, and TV cameras showed Braves closer Craig Kimbrel standing in the bullpen at Dodger Stadium, clearly annoyed that he was not brought in to face Uribe. That stoked criticism of Gonzalez, who said afterward that he would’ve used Kimbrel for a four-out save, but not for the last six outs.

Gonzalez firing took an awkward turn late Monday

By David O'Brien - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PITTSBURGH — Finding out you’ve been fired is never easy, but imagine finding out the way that Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez did late Monday.

An hour or so after the Braves’ 8-5 series-opening loss to the Pirates, a person familiar with the situation said Gonzalez received an email notifying him of his scheduled flight to Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon.

That was a bad sign, since the four-game series in Pittsburgh runs through Thursday.

Gonzalez and general manager John Coppolella have been addressing rumors about Gonzalez’s job status for weeks, since the Braves were losing their first nine games of the season on the way to a 9-28 record through Monday. So when he got the email, it had to be a bad sign for Gonzalez. The Braves had made the decision to fire him and booked his commercial flight home Tuesday, but didn’t plan to tell him he’d been fired until Tuesday morning, after president of baseball operations John Hart flew to Pittsburgh to join general manager John Coppolella.

Later Monday night after getting the email, Gonzalez eventually had confirmed by Braves top officials what he already was certain about by then: He was fired.

When Gonzalez spoke to the AJC on Tuesday after leaving Pittsburgh, he declined to discuss details of when and how he found out he’d been fired, though he did talk about the decision that many around baseball had thought was inevitable after the franchise-worst 18-loss April.

“I don’t think there’s a perfect time to do it,” Gonzalez said of the firing. “I think you do it when they feel like the time is right, so they did it. … I will tell you this, through all this stuff my team played hard. They busted their asses. They had to answer questions that they shouldn’t have to answer about the manager, and per man they all handled it with class and they played their asses off.”

Gonzalez, 52, talked with several players before he left Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning, either by phone or in person.

“I’ve spoken to half a dozen of them, saw a couple of them in the lobby when I was checking out,” he said. “It was nice to manage Freddie Freeman for six years and see him grow up to become an established major league player, and grown up and mature and become a father here soon. To watch him go through that process, and Julio Teheran and those guys, it was nice.”

It’s the second time Gonzalez was fired as manager, the first by a fickle Marlins owner in June 2010.

“You know going in, that’s the business that we’re in,” he said. “We knew we weren’t going to win 120 games (this season), but we thought would be a little bit more competitive, and when you start the way we started, you knew there was always a possibility (of being fired). …

“I think if you’re going to do it you do it now. If you’re not going to be here (as manager) in 2017, you’d rather do it sooner than later, for me. I’m OK with that. It’s a tough grind. Winning ballgames in the big leagues is tough when you’re winning, can you imagine when you’re losing and going through this?”

Gonzalez has a 710-692 record in 10 seasons as a major league manager, including 434-413 in five-plus seasons with the Braves after replacing his mentor, Bobby Cox, when the legendary former Braves manager retired following the 2010 season.

Cox texted Gonzalez on Tuesday morning after the AJC broke the story of his firing. “He texted me, so I called him,” Gonzalez said. “He didn’t know anything about it. … He felt terrible. He said, ‘I never saw this coming. We’ll talk more when you come home.’”

The Braves have been in rebuild mode since November 2014, trading away established players and rebuilding the farm system in an effort to have sustained long-term success beginning — they hope — soon after they move into a new ballpark in 2017.

They had a 400-332 record under Gonzalez through July 7, 2015, and 34-81 since.

“I’m really proud of my record, and it took a beating these last two years going through this,” he said, then repeated, “It took a beating.”

If the Braves weren’t going to pick up the option on his contract for 2017 — and it’s been apparent for some time they weren’t — or give him a vote of confidence for at least the remainder of this season, then Gonzalez understood the point of firing him now rather than continuing to operate with his status hanging over the team.

“What would have sucked is if you’d dragged it all the way out to the weekend before the season ended, and then got whacked,” he said. “There’s no perfect timing, but in this situation I think sooner than later was better.”

He added, “I think I’ll be OK. I’ve already talked to a bunch of baseball people, they texted me, offering support. Maybe I’ll take a week or two off, a month off, ride the motorcycle around before it gets too hot.”

Braves players react to firing of Fredi G

By David O'Brien - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PITTSBURGH — Some Braves players got a call from Fredi Gonzalez; others talked to him in the hotel lobby on his way out Tuesday. By late morning all the Braves knew their manager had been fired along with bench coach Carlos Tosca, the first major casualties of the team’s majors-worst 9-28 record.

“When two guys lose their job it’s not a very good day,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “It’s never good to go through a change like this during a season, I don’t care who you are. It’s always tough. It’s hard to put in words. (Gonzalez) is a good man. Everybody loves him around here.

“I can’t find a person to say a bad word about Fredi. But we’ve had a tough couple of years, and baseball is a business. Unfortunately change was the way to go, I guess. You’ve got to abide by it and go out there and start trying to win ballgames.” Braves catcher A.J. Pierzynski has played 19 major league seasons with seven organizations and said he’d never experienced a midseason managerial firing before.

“It’s never easy to see a good man go, doing something he loves doing,” Pierzynkski said. “You don’t want to see good people like that let go. It’s a shame, but this game goes on, the team goes on. Fredi will be missed, but at the same time we have a new manager and a game tonight that we have to focus on.”

Pierzynski was asked if a managerial change — Brian Snitker was named interim manager — might be something that could help the Braves get their season turned around.

“I don’t know, I’ve never been through this,” he said. “You come into the season expecting a certain guy to be here the whole year, and when he’s not here it’s a little bit different. But Snit will do things the way he’s supposed to do. A lot of guys I’ve talked to know Snit and have a lot of respect for him, and say he’ll do a good job. So we’ll see.”

Right fielder Nick Markakis, in his second season with the Braves after nine with the Orioles, said he’s gone through plenty of managerial firings, including the midseason variety.

“My second team, sixth manager,” he said. “Been through it a couple of times. It’s not a fun day. Ultimately you don’t want things like this to happen. Then again it is a business. I experienced that a couple of offseasons ago (when the Orioles didn’t try to re-sign him). You’ve got to do what’s right for the team. Sometimes change is a good thing; sometimes it’s a bad thing. But you never know until you try.”

Veteran outfielder Jeff Francoeur, who experienced a midseason managerial change last season when he was with the Phillies, said, “It’s never an easy day when something like this happens. Not just Fredi but Tosca, two people lose their job. In any profession that’s not fun. But at the same time, we know that eventually they wanted a new voice, and as players, as professionals, we’ve got to keep going and play hard.

“I think Fredi did a great job coming in to replace Bobby (Cox); who wanted to do that? That’s one of the toughest jobs there is. But at this point, I think they’d made their mind up obviously with going into a new stadium next year, that things would be different. And I think at this point there’s still 4 1/2 months left and hopefully this is an opportunity for a new voice to come in and see if we can do something.”

Braves president of baseball operations John Hart and general manager John Coppolella talked of the change — a new voice — hopefully being something to help the Braves stop what the top officials consider to be underachieving by the team to this point of the season.

“Mr. Hart and Mr. Coppy thought it was time,” Markakis said. “They’re trying to do what’s best for us, and I think we all understand that and we all see that. …

“We just need to play ball. Ultimately everything comes down to the players; we’re the ones out there doing it. We just need to finish up the first half strong, come out in the second half and build on that. We’ve got a lot of young guys around here, we’ve got some good veterans to teach. It’s a learning process.”

Pierzynski said the call he got from Gonzalez on Tuesday morning was something he never wanted to have happen.

“You get a phone call in the morning from the manager, and he’s telling you he’s been fired. It’s not easy,” Pierzynski said. “Doesn’t matter who it is. Obviously I think everyone in here liked Fredi as a guy and as a person. As a human being he’s one of the best. He genuinely cared for everybody. …

“That’s the tough part of this business. But like I said, we’ve got a game tonight, and we’ve got to move on, try to play hard and win one for Snit.”

Interim manager Snitker excited about ‘bittersweet’ opportunity

By David O'Brien - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PITTSBURGH — Brian Snitker came from Triple-A to take over the reins of a 9-28 team Tuesday when the 60-year-old baseball (and Braves) lifer was named as interim manager after Fredi Gonzalez was fired.

“It is bittersweet,” said Snitker, who’s in his 40th season in the Braves organization and was in his third as Triple-A Gwinnett manager. “It’s thrilling. I’m excited about being here. It’s bittersweet because Fredi is a good friend of mine. We went through a lot together here. He’s a good man. But it’s kind of part of what we do here. I mean, it’s just part of the business.

“Unfortunately when things go as they have been, somebody’s got to go. But I’m excited, I’m honored that John Coppolella and John Hart entrusted me with this job. It’s a great responsibility. I’ve told people, it’s kind of like I feel like I’ve been preparing for it my whole life, and it’s here. And I’m anxious to get going.”

Snitker spent seven seasons as the major league team’s third-base coach through 2013. He also had two stints as Braves bullpen coach in 1985 and 1988-1990. He’s been a minor league manager for 20 seasons in the Braves organization and had many current Braves on his teams, ranging from prospects promoted from Gwinnett to veterans on his Double-A Mississippi more than a decade ago.

“Snit has been a Brave for 40 years,” Braves general manager John Coppolella said. “He’s somebody that was on Bobby Cox’s staff, somebody that has had a lot of these players, whether it was at Triple-A, even had Frenchy (Jeffy Francoeur) and Kelly (Johnson) when they were back at Double-A 12, 15 years ago. He’s somebody that can kind of bring back the Braves Way. Our whole staff has worked with him at some point. They all know him very well. And it’s something for us where we felt that this was a man who’d get the right message to our players and to our staff at a really tough time.”

And what is that message?

“The right message now is that the season isn’t over,” Coppolella said. “We just made a change. I think if you ask any of our players, to a man they feel like they’ve underachieved. We feel like they’ve underachieved. And it’s a new voice. It isn’t Fredi’s fault that they’re not playing well, but sometimes a new voice can help get the right message across.”

Francoeur compared the situation with last season when he played for the Phillies and they named longtime organizational coach and manager Pete Mackanin to replace Ryan Sandberg after Sandberg resigned as manager in June.

“With Snit, they made the right choice with that,” Francoeur said. “He’s been a baseball lifer, a grinder. It reminds me a lot of Philly last year. We had Pete Mackanin, who’s been around for a long, long time. He was able to come in, and look what he’s done with those guys. They’re playing their butts off and having a great year this year. To me it’s nothing that Fredi didn’t do, it’s just sometimes that happens in sports. I talked to Fredi today. He was great, man. He told us to keep going. We’ll miss him, but maybe at the same time getting a new voice can do something different.”

Snitker said he got the call Monday while having breakfast with his wife. Initially, Snitker didn’t think anything of getting a morning call from Coppolella, since that’s normal for the Triple-A manager.

“We talk all the time anyway with the player moves and everything,” he said. “My wife and I were having breakfast, and it kind of, I was like, ‘Oh, man.’ It kind of got my head spinning a little bit. I felt like I just kind of dropped out of the sky into the clubhouse. And here we go.

“It’s been a wild 24 hours. Getting through that (Triple-A) game last night was a little different, just knowing what was going on.”

Braves president of baseball operations John Hart has known Snitker since they were opposing minor league managers decades ago.

“When John and I called him, he said, ‘Hell, yes, I want this opportunity,’” Hart said. “He’s at a point, he’s given his heart and soul and career to the Braves, and having competed against him as a manager, and obviously following his career, this is a guy that’s tough, but he’s a terrific guy. When you come into these situations, your players are a little shook, they’re not sure what’s going on.

“He’s coming in with a clean slate. He hasn’t seen these guys, maybe guys who haven’t played up to expectations. But he’s managed a lot of games in a lot of years. He’s been in the big leagues. He knows the Braves, knows our players. When we looked at all the dynamics, we were very fortunate to have a guy with that kind of experience and that kind of knowledge of the Braves, who knows our players.”

It’s a vastly different situation for Snitker in many ways, but the game is the same, he said.

“It’s a baseball game,” he said. “It’s a new situation for me obviously. I think it’ll take me some time to get into this routine of what you do here, because it is different. Everything’s magnified, and it’s a lot more demanding time (requirements) on you and things like that. I told (Hart and Coppolella) and told the players, I’ve just got to live it for a while. I just want to watch the club play and then see where we go from there.”

Braves’ handling of Gonzalez’s firing takes clumsy to a new level

By Jeff Schultz

Debates will be ongoing as to whether the Braves were justified in their firing of manager of Fredi Gonzalez Tuesday, or whether the front office is merely making him the scapegoat for their own miscalculations about this season (as I believe).

But there’s one thing that’s not up for debate: The handling of Gonzalez’s firing, as orchestrated by general manager John Coppolella, was one of the clumsiest transactions in pro sports history.

Consider:

• As the Journal-Constitution’s David O’Brien reported, Gonzalez first learned he had been fired from a travel agent, not Coppolella. About an hour following the Braves’ loss in Pittsburgh Monday night, the manager received an email confirmation of a flight that had been booked for him for Tuesday to return to Atlanta. The Braves still had six games remaining on their road trip, including three more in Pittsburgh. So it wasn’t difficult for Gonzalez to conclude he had been fired. But that wasn’t confirmed until he confronted team officials in the team hotel Monday night. (Coppolella was on the trip at that point but president of baseball operations John Hart wasn’t. Hart joined the team on Tuesday and the plan was to tell Gonzalez at that time.) • Gwinnett Braves manager Brian Snitker was phoned by Coppolella Monday morning and told the Braves were going to fire Gonzalez the next day and the team wanted him to take over as interim manager. Snitker was having breakfast with his wife at the time. “My wife and I were having breakfast, and it kind of, I was like, ‘Oh, man.’ It kind of got my head spinning a little bit. I felt like I just kind of dropped out of the sky into the clubhouse.”

So let’s recap. The organization that preaches class and professionalism and doing things the “Braves way,” felt it more important to tell a travel agent (the night before) that Gonzalez was getting fired and tell Snitker, his temporary replacement, a full 24 hours ahead of time that a change was coming.

Even if you attempt to justify giving Snitker a heads up — enabling him to pack for the trip — 24 hours notice is a bit much. More than a bit, actually. And certainly, there is no reason to feel compelled to book Gonzalez’s return flight with a travel rep before the manager is even informed that he’s gone.

This wasn’t a high security situation — Take his parking key card! Security, escort him out! — and certainly there is no shortage of Pittsburgh-to- Atlanta flights. Was Coppolella worried fares were going to go up?

There are clumsy ways to do things. But Coppolella and the Braves just took clumsy to a new level.

Gonzalez Era will not burn brightly in memory

By Steve Hummer

Fredi Gonzalez had been tap dancing on a trap door almost from the beginning of his five-plus seasons as Braves manager. His very first season (2011) set a dolorous tone, when his team, leading St. Louis by 8 ½ games for the wild card at the start of September, collapsed.

That would not be the last time Fredi’s fellows folded. In 2014, the Braves were tied for first in the division at the All Star break, only to go 28-40 from there and fade from view. Even last season, the Braves losingest since 1990, they were a respectable 42-42 near the midpoint, and then began the tire fire that smolders still.

It generally reflects very poorly upon management when your team – regardless of the lack of talent, regardless of the vagaries of injury – routinely unravels as the months pass. Too often, Gonzalez was the shepherd of a flock that wasted away from spring to autumn.

Gonzalez will not make another September. The trap door has been sprung. Many hands were on the lever.

His bosses did him no favors, constructing around him a mismatched set of punchless players who are only keeping a position warm until some prospect can step up and claim it. No manager could have made chicken salad of today’s Braves. This team would have made John McGraw look like a simpleton.

His players failed him, from the big-ticket flops like B.J. Upton and to, more currently, the inconsistent bulwark performers like Julio Teheran and Freddie Freeman. No one stepped up to lead from within.

And there was his own hand on that lever, for as much as Gonzalez was victimized by the Braves rebuilding, for as much as his juggled his lineups to try to find one that might work, he never did seem to push the button that would make a meaningful difference.

The Gonzalez era will be an oddly formless one. The Braves had a measure of regular season success, winning 94 and 96 games in 2012 and ’13. And in those two seasons, Gonzalez actually finished among the top four vote-getters for National League Manager of the Year. (Not that necessarily means much – three of the past six NL managers of the year have since been fired, and a fourth slipped into retirement).

None of that meant anything when October arrived. They were ousted in a 2012 wild card game that became an excruciating clinic on the infield fly rule, and brushed away like dander by the Dodgers in a division series the next year.

Gonzalez’s teams never pleasantly surprised at the end, never wildly exceeded expectation, never inspired the fan base with their guileful play. The manager was a very good man, a steady hand in difficult times but one who seldom lifted a team beyond its means.

His team today is horrible. His teams of the recent past were unremarkable in many ways.

Not really a flattering summary of his five-plus seasons at the head of the Braves dugout, but flattery has not come easily the past year or so given the great number of high-profile ousters (Falcons, Georgia football, Georgia Tech basketball and now this).

I don’t know that even now I can say for certain what kind of manager Gonzalez is, or could have been, had he been given a little more time or been able to engage in the chess match using more than just pawns.

The best I can conclude is that Gonzalez was not a bad manager, but rather one who was just not good enough. Especially for the vision the Braves have for that new ballpark just across the Cobb County line. The Braves can now pick a manager who fits

By Mark Bradley - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Braves don’t yet know what attributes they’ll seek in a permanent manager. They could opt for an analytics-based man. They could go old- school. They could wind up promoting from within. Theirs is now an almost-blank slate, but here’s the “almost”:

The new man has to want to be part of this. He has to want to manage the Braves as they are, which is in transition. There’s a plan in place. You might think it balderdash, but the Braves believe this is the only way they can get and stay good again. They’re not backing off because they fired one manager and, via an emailed one-way flight confirmation, botched the firing.

This isn’t to suggest that Fredi Gonzalez was a non-believer – he always expressed support for the “process” – but the job he had wasn’t the job he’d taken. He’d inherited a team that made the 2010 playoffs. The club he managed to the 2013 division title led the league in home runs but also in . Frank Wren built that team. Frank Wren is gone with the wind.

New management kept Gonzalez after Wren was “terminated” in September 2014. It handed him a year’s extension at the All-Star break last summer, which was both an apology in advance – John Coppolella and John Hart knew they were about to trade a slew of veterans at the deadline – and a mistake. When the Braves crashed from 42-42 on July 7 to 67-95, the Two Johns had to ask: “Do we fire the guy we just extended?”

They didn’t. Should have, though. Fredi G. has his strengths as a manager, but righting a team gone wrong isn’t among them. He knew he was a lame duck when he drove south to spring training. Instead of the hope inherent in every new baseball season, a fatalism hung over the team. The team’s Grapefruit League record was 6-20-6, which should have been a sign. The real season saw the Braves start 0-9. Barely having begun, the year was essentially gone.

From 0-9 on, every week became a referendum on Fredi. (The manager himself was speaking publicly about his lack of job security in April.) Sure enough, 0-9 became 9-27, and enough was finally enough. Even if Gonzalez had been handed the worst team in baseball, should the Braves have been playing like the worst team in the history of baseball?

The Two Johns weren’t going to fire themselves. They believe in what they’re doing. (They also believe this team, while bad, isn’t the worst assemblage ever.) So does the third John, meaning Schuerholz, for whom this rebuild will be a plus/minus on the ol’ Legacy Ledger. He was the best general manager ever. He doesn’t want to watch years of losing in SunTrust Park, which sits 2 ½ miles from his Vinings condominium. He wants a good team that will stay good, same as his Braves did. He absolutely believes in Coppolella and Hart.

The next Braves manager will need to share the Johns’ vision. Bud Black is the name that pops up most, and he’d make sense. The Braves are rebuilding around pitching, and he has worked under Schuerholz and Hart. That’s not to say he’s a lock. There is no lock.

Ron Gardenhire was among the baseball’s best managers when winning six division titles with the not-profligate Twins. Would he commit to a rebuilding project? (Like Black, he’s 58.) Terry Pendleton and Eddie Perez, beloved Braves who are now coaches, are possibilities. The ex-Brave Mark DeRosa has been mentioned, but he hasn’t managed. (The big-league skipper apt to be fired next is Detroit’s Brad Ausmus, who came to this job having managed only Israel’s team in the World Baseball Classic.)

As for the fanciful notion of : I can’t imagine him wanting to manager, and I can’t imagine him being good at it. That axiom about great players making bad managers? There’s a reason it’s axiomatic.

Dave Martinez has served as ’s bench coach with the Rays and the Cubs. Maddon and Baltimore’s are seen as the best in the business. (San Francisco’s is the best every other October.) The Rays are an analytics-driven organization that spends wisely; the Cubs are seeing the fruits of a deep-dish reboot. The caveat: The Rays interviewed Martinez for the manager’s job when Maddon left but hired .

Another name: . He took a brief turn managing Seattle, which was heavy into analytics; since 2014, he has been Ned Yost’s bench coach with the Royals, who’ve graced consecutive . He worked under Showalter (and Hart) as a Rangers coach.

Again, for emphasis: These are just names. If Brian Snitker can take this roster to .500, he deserves to be manager for life. (He’s 0-1, though the Braves did score more runs Tuesday than in any game this season.) The Two Johns don’t have to decide anything for a while. They’ve given themselves the chance to choose the manager who fits their process. They won’t botch this.

Mallex’s 2 homers not enough, Braves lose 12-9

By David O'Brien - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PITTSBURGH – For a while Tuesday, it looked like Brian Snitker might experience in his first game as interim manager the worst first inning of the Braves season and the most improbable comeback.

Aaron Blair gave up seven runs in the first inning and the Braves trailed 9-0 after two before Mallex Smith hit a pair of two-run homers during a five-inning stretch in which the Braves pulled to within 11-9. Alas, for the Braves and Snitker the rally fell short in a 12-9 loss that dropped the Braves’ majors-worst record to 9-29.

“I saw everything that everybody told me when I came in here this afternoon and I met with the coaching staff,” said Snitker, who was named interim manager Tuesday after the firing of Fredi Gonzalez. “That’s the one thing that they said. T.P. (first-base coach Terry Pendleton) said, ‘Snit, the record’s not good but these guys never quit, and they just keep fighting.’ And that’s exactly what they did. It was really cool to see.”

With the first multi-homer game by a Braves player this season, Smith did about all he could to get fellow rookie Blair (0-3) off the hook for the loss. But the right-hander lasted only 1 1/3 innings and was charged with nine hits and nine runs, raising his ERA from 4.05 to 7.59.

“We didn’t get the win, so it doesn’t really matter,” Smith said of his two-run homers in the third and seventh innings, both three-run innings for the Braves.

As for the Braves’ never-say-die tendencies, Smith said, “We’ve been fighting all year, I’ve been saying that the whole time. We’ve just got to get two things to go together. Seems like when our pitching is good our bats haven’t been, and then vice-versa. So right now we’re just waiting for it all to click.”

Blair, in his fifth major league start, gave up seven runs and seven hits in the opening inning, the first seven-run inning against the Braves this season and the most runs allowed by a Braves pitcher in any inning since Paul Maholm gave up eight runs in the fifth inning at Milwaukee on Sept. 12, 2012.

“Pretty much everything was up in the zone and in the middle of the plate,” Blair said, “and a good hitting team — I guess that’s what happens.”

Snitker said, “Location wasn’t good, and secondary pitches weren’t real good. Threw some good change-ups at times. But he’s going to have to be a fastball-location guy. He’s not going to blow anybody away. He’s got good secondary stuff, he just was missing location. It didn’t take them long to make him pay for it, too.”

The Braves had a season-high 15 hits and surpassed their previous season high of eight runs in an April 19 win against the Dodgers. They had not scored more than five runs since.

Gordon Beckham had three hits and two doubles and Smith had the first two-homer game by a Brave. In fact, no Braves have more than one homer all season except Smith (three) and Freddie Freeman (six).

“There were a lot of really good things that happened,” Snitker said, “just didn’t win the game.”

The Braves had their third multi-homer game of the season and second in as many nights, after going 35 games without one between a two-homer opening day and two on Monday. After totaling seven homers in 1,191 at-bats between opening day and Monday, and have four homers in two nights at Pittsburgh.

The Pirates had season-high 21 hits including three-hit games from four different players.

Braves fan petitions Aybar trade

By The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Braves shortstop Erick Aybar is not having a great start.

The Braves acquired Aybar in the trade that sent Gold Glove infielder Andrelton Simmons to the .

At the start of the season, the Braves set a high trade price on Aybar.

"We need to win more games this year, and he’s going to be a big part of that. So we’re very happy to hold onto Eric Aybar," Braves general manager John Coppolella said in March.

The Braves probably aren't fielding many offers for the 32-year-old right hander, but one entrepreneural Braves fan wants him gone.

Braves fan "Deep Freeze" has started a petition on Change.org to "Fire Erick Aybar." (Note: NSFW language)

It has yet to meet half of the 100 signatures it set as limit to implore Coppolella to act.

For the record, Aybar - who did not start Tuesday following the dismissal of manager Fredi Gonzalez - is batting just .180 with four extra-base hits this season. He has 26 strikeouts with just four walks and owns the worst OPS (.424) in baseball.

Fox Sports

Braves fire manager Fredi Gonzalez after 9-28 start

By Zach Dillard

The Fredi Gonzalez Era has come to an end.

The Atlanta Braves fired their 52-year-old manager, who was in his sixth season at the helm, after the franchise's 9-28 start to the 2016 campaign.

The Braves named Triple-A Gwinnett manager Brian Snitker as Gonzalez's interim replacement.

“You don’t like to even think about making these decisions," Braves president of baseball operations John Hart said. "You spend so much time with your manager and your staff trying to make this thing work. I know, for me, when I came over 18 months ago I wanted Fredi to be our manager and to give him a chance to be that guy. We extended him last year, along with the staff.

"As we got into spring training and opened the season and got off to the bad start, we wanted to keep providing opportunities to see if we could turn this thing around. It obviously didn't look like it was going to happen."

Gonzalez's time in Atlanta unraveled quickly as the organization's ongoing postseason futility led to a full-scale rebuild when Hart and general manager John Coppolella took the reins. The Bobby Cox protege posted the one of the best records in baseball during his first three seasons, winning 279 games from 2011 to 2013. But after two short-lived playoff appearances and a 2014 second-half collapse, the Braves started moving in an opposite direction, trading the likes of , , Andrelton Simmons, Craig Kimbrel, and Evan Gattis for high- end prospects.

After promising improvement in 2016, the worst start in franchise history was a far cry from the front office's expectations. Hart and Coppolella discussed a potential change for nearly a week before calling Snitker Monday morning to inform him of the upcoming changes.

“Our bad start is not just laid at the foot of Fredi Gonzalez," Hart said. "We all assume a lot of responsibility for how this club has gotten off to this kind of a start. But with that said, we do think we’re certainly better than (how) we’ve played."

Added Coppolella: “It was time for a new voice and time for a change. And we hope that the change will spur this team. There’s still four and a half months left. It’s something where we don’t feel like this season is over.”

The managerial change comes with myriad alterations to the team's coaching staff.

Bench coach Carlos Tosca was also fired on Tuesday; first-base coach Terry Pendleton steps into his position. Bullpen coach Eddie Perez takes over the first-base coaching duties as Triple-A Gwinnett pitching coach Marty Reed moves up as bullpen coach.

Coppolella said the franchise will consider "four to five" in-house candidates for the franchise's managerial position long-term, including Pendleton and Perez, along a variety of external choices.

“It’s a very important hire for us long-term,” Coppolella said.

Braves interim manager Brian Snitker: 'I'm excited about the opportunity'

In an interview during the series in early May, Gonzalez expressed his desires to see this long-term vision through — once top-tier prospects like and made their MLB debuts.

"My biggest fear — I guess it's not a fear, nobody loses their life over this — or concern is you go through these lumps, you see these young guys come in and then you get let go or you get dismissed," Gonzalez said. "And the guys are here the next year and they're winning everything."

On Tuesday, the Braves made it official: Fredi Gonzalez will not be a part of those long-term plans.

Braves interim manager Brian Snitker: 'It's been a wild 24 hours'

By Zach Dillard

Brian Snitker waited 40 years for the phone call that came on Monday morning as he and his wife, Ronnie, ate breakfast. Atlanta Braves general manager John Coppolella was on the line offering a managerial position at the major-league level, if only on an interim basis.

"I feel like I've been preparing for it my whole life," said Snitker, who has filled a variety of coaching roles in the Braves organization for four decades. "And it's here." The organization's firing of manager Fredi Gonzalez on Monday night after a 9-28 start to the 2016 campaign opened the door for Snitker, who has served as Triple-A Gwinnett's manager since 2014, to return to his profession's highest level. A former bullpen and third-base coach in Atlanta, Snitker has filled 11 separate managerial roles in the Braves farm system since , then acting as the organization's director of player development, offered him his first coaching position in 1981. When Snitker was sent back to the minors following the 2013 season, there were no promises he would ever return to the major-league level.

Then the phone rang.

"It's very thrilling. I'm excited about being here," Snitker said. "It's bittersweet because Fredi's a good friend of mine. We went through a lot together here. He's a good man. But it's kind of part of what we do here, it's just part of business. Unfortunately, when things go like they have been somebody's gotta go."

Snitker inherits a messy situation in Atlanta. The Braves own not only the worst record in baseball, but the franchise's worst 37-game start since 1911 — as the Rustlers.

The offense is in shambles — poised to be the lowest-scoring team in baseball for the second straight season — as the team's position players are the only group to combine for sub-replacement level value (-3.9 WAR) in the majors. (The Phillies are the second-worst unit at 0.4 WAR.) Starting shortstop Erick Aybar grades out as MLB's worst everyday player and the struggles of catcher A.J. Pierzynski, outfielder Ender Inciarte and Opening Day third baseman Adonis Garcia have not helped matters. The only player with at least 100 plate appearances to be hitting above league average is first baseman Freddie Freeman.

The pitching department offers much more promise as an all-25-and-under rotation starts to take shape with Julio Teheran, Matt Wisler, Mike Foltynewicz and Aaron Blair projecting as potential long-term building blocks. Braves starters rank 17th in ERA and 23rd in WAR this season — with their May numbers climbing into top-10 range.

The bullpen is slightly improved from last season's forgettable unit, if only due to Arodys Vizcaino and lefty specialist Hunter Cervenka.

In his meeting with the players on Tuesday in Pittsburgh, Snitker expressed optimism: "I told them, 'You're good players. There's some good players here.' The record isn't where they want it, but I don't think that's what kind of team this is.

"The one thing that I took away from talking to the coaching staff, Coppy and John Hart was these guys play hard every night. They're in games, they get after it, (things) just haven't went their way."

Braves interim manager Brian Snitker: 'I'm excited about the opportunity'

If anything, the longtime company man simply represents a reset button for a front office that believes its product should be much, much better than 9-28.

"It was time for a new voice and time for a change. And we hope that the change will spur this team. There's still four and a half months left. It's something where we don't feel like this season is over," general manager John Coppolella said of Snitker. " ... We felt that this was a man who would get the right message to our players and to our staff at a really tough time."

Snitker's future with the big-league club remains unknown.

The 2016 season presents itself as an audition of sorts — Coppolella confirmed there are four to five in-house candidates the front office will consider for its long-term managerial solution, Snitker's name presumably being one of them — but there will likely be plenty of competition.

Fellow Braves coaches Eddie Perez and Terry Pendleton will be considered as well, while popular external candidates include former Padres manager Bud Black, who has ties to both Braves president of baseball operations John Hart and vice chairman , Red Sox bench coach and former Braves player Mark DeRosa, who works as an analyst for MLB Network.

Still, an MLB opportunity is better than nothing.

At his introductory news conference as manager of Triple-A Gwinnett in January 2014, Snitker never hid his desires to return to the majors.

"Everybody with the jerseys on back there, myself included," Snitker said at the time, referencing his newly inherited roster, "we all want to be in the major leagues. It's why we do this. We're competitive beasts by nature. It's kind of how we're wired."

Twenty-eight months later, he's made it back.

The Atlanta Braves' mess isn't Fredi Gonzalez's fault

By Dieter Kurtenbach

The Atlanta Braves fired manager Fredi Gonzalez Tuesday in a move that was met with near universal understanding. After all, the Braves are by far the worst team in baseball with only nine wins on the season.

But getting rid of Gonzalez won't change the Braves' fate. They're still going to be really bad.

It's not Gonzalez's fault the Braves have two fewer homers as a team (11) than Rockies third baseman . It's not Gonzalez's fault the Braves are hitting .229 and slugging .302 through 37 games.

It's not Gonzalez's fault the Braves have one of the worst starting rotations in baseball (4.49 ERA) that gives way to a worse bullpen (4.78 ERA) and that the defense behind them is the worst in the National League (minus-17.3 defensive WAR.)

Gonzalez is the first manager to be fired this season, but he won't be the last. For bad teams looking at a long summer, something has to change -- someone has to go, and the easiest guy to get rid of in baseball is the manager. Gonzalez, like the vast majority of his managerial brethren, was a professional scapegoat for the front-office guys who handle teams' personnel.

So now the Braves will repeat the same rhetoric that always comes with a managerial firing --€” it was time for a change and new blood will energize the clubhouse and maximize this team's potential. That rhetoric, of course, is empty.

Gonzalez was fired because the Braves didn't win, but Gonzalez couldn't have done much to avoid the inevitable losses that come from fielding one of the worst Major League teams in recent memory.

Gonzalez's role as the sacrificial lamb should bring a larger issue to the forefront: What exactly do managers do in the modern game?

Joe Maddon is considered the best manager in baseball, but what is it that he does that makes the Cubs so good? Yes, his players really like him and there's a tremendous, positive energy around the team, but that's a frequent byproduct of winning. And make no mistake, the Cubs are winning because they have by far the best roster in the National League this year.

If Maddon were to hypothetically take over the Braves, would Atlanta be any better? If Gonzalez were to manage the Cubs, would they no longer be the best team in baseball?

To be fair, managers do things: They handle pitchers, manage lineups and set the culture of a clubhouse. Maddon does those things as well as anyone in the league. But in this era of , how much critical thinking are managers actually doing? More often than not, you go by the binder (or, as of this year, the iPad) and play the numbers over the long haul of the season.

Still, we pretend as if managers really matter in the war between winning and losing.

If they did, why was Red Sox manager fired for leaving in Pedro Martinez too long in the 2003 Championship Series? The Red Sox won 95 regular-season games and were within five outs of the World Series under Little, but one high-leverage decision over the course of a long, arduous year -- and a defensible one, at that --€” cost him his job. The Red Sox tacitly admitted the manager didn't matter until someone needs to take the blame.

Baseball is an individual sport practiced by teams. In every other sport, managers are required to handle tactics and balance pragmatism with entertainment. They install systems and run plays -- there's strategy. In baseball, the closest thing to strategy is a defensive shift (which is a byproduct of the analytics revolution), sacrifice bunting and pitching changes.

The were one of the worst teams in baseball last year and are one of the best this year. has been the manager both years, and by all accounts out of the Windy City, he hasn't done anything different on a day-to-day basis this year. The players still run the clubhouse (hence the Adam LaRoche nonsense in spring training), he and his coaching staff still confer about the lineup card before the game and pitching coach Don Cooper still has something close to autonomy in handling pitchers.

But if the White Sox keep this pace up and win the AL Central, you can consider Ventura a lock to win Manager of the Year.

The only other manager in the AL who could give him a run for the award is in Seattle, where the Mariners are atop the West after a 76-win 2015.

I'll give you a moment to Google who the manager "at the helm" of the Mariners' so-far tremendous turnaround is.

Gonzalez was handed a loaded set of dice and expected to roll good numbers. Triple-A manager Brian Snitker will take over this garbage Braves team on an interim basis in his place, after which another professional sacrificial lamb will be handed those same set of dice.

ESPN

Who will manage the Braves in 2017?

Jerry Crasnick - ESPN Senior Writer

Every industry reaction to Fredi Gonzalez's firing by the Atlanta Braves comes back to the same theme: He was a good man stuck in a bad situation, and any fan, player, media member or colleague who crossed his path through the years would have to seriously reach to say a negative thing about him personally.

If Gonzalez's deficiencies in developing young players or running a game weren't quite on a par with his people skills, his supporters can point to his 434-413 record and two postseason appearances in Atlanta as evidence that the guy can manage a little bit.

And the people who vilified him on Twitter every night, ad nauseam, can feel free to vent their anger on something else. You know who you are.

In this respect, it was almost a relief to see the Braves cut the cord Tuesday morning, promote Triple-A manager Brian Snitker to be interim manager through the end of the season and buy themselves some time to think long term with their next hire. They'll move into SunTrust Park in suburban Cobb County in 2017, and the hope is that they'll be able to expedite the rebuilding process in the same way the Phillies have this season.

It's only natural to ask why the Braves felt impelled to make a change at this point. In the name of a long-term revamp, management has gutted the roster to the extent that the Braves are a lock to lose 100 games. Subtract Freddie Freeman's six home runs, and they've hit a total of five home runs in 37 games. So now that they're 9-28 and on a pace to go 39-123, why make a human sacrifice of the manager?

The answers would require a grasp of the organizational dynamic that run deeper than any outsider can discern. But the consensus in baseball circles is that all the roster revamping and change in Atlanta probably resulted in some fraying of relations between Gonzalez and management. Change was coming, so there was no point in postponing the inevitable. "Fredi was saying all the right things publicly,'' one MLB official said. "But if you read between the lines, you could see more and more that the relationship was getting strained by some of his comments and his lineup decisions. There was so much alienation, it was probably starting to be an antagonistic relationship.''

At this point, Braves fans obviously care more about where the organization goes from here. Once Snitker completes the season and the Braves seek a long-term replacement for Gonzalez, what names will club president John Hart and general manager John Coppolella consider in their efforts to put a more competitive product on the field?

A lot of recent speculation has focused on former manager Bud Black, a man who checks a lot of boxes. He's particularly adept at developing pitching, and he was in the mix for the Washington job last winter before the Nationals hired under somewhat murky circumstances.

Former Twins manager is another highly regarded veteran baseball man who could wind up on the radar. But the Braves will have to answer two interesting questions before they pursue Black or Gardenhire. One is money. The other is how long they expect to suffer with young players before they plan to contend.

"The Braves aren't known for paying well,'' an American League executive said, "and I think they need someone who can be in 'development mode.'"

If the Braves follow the recent trend of trying to find a star manager with no experience, Mark DeRosa could be in the mix. It's instructive that two executives with different clubs mentioned DeRosa, a 16-year MLB and former Brave who is now a commentator for the MLB Network.

"I think he's a guy with upside,'' a National League executive said. "It'll take some time, but he's no different than [Brad] Ausmus or [A.J.] Hinch or [Mike] Matheny or [Robin] Ventura. Guys like him. He was a clubhouse leader everywhere he went.''

If the Braves want to stay in-house and pick someone from the current staff, they could consider , who has had time to learn and move on since a rocky tenure in Houston, or Eddie Perez or Terry Pendleton, who remain on the team's coaching staff but were passed over for Snitker for the interim job.

One wild card in the equation: special assistant Chipper Jones. He has a big personality, and there's no doubt he would be entertaining. But a person familiar with Jones' thinking said he's not interested in managing the Braves in 2017. Interestingly enough, Jones is known to be a big DeRosa fan and might be an advocate for DeRosa if the Braves solicit his opinion on the next hire.

At the moment, those are all questions for another day. Fredi Gonzalez is out of a job, the Braves are trudging along toward 100 losses, and connoisseurs of managerial death watches can now focus exclusively on Ausmus' shaky tenure with the . Another day, another vigil.

Braves fire Fredi Gonzalez amid one of the worst starts in MLB history

ESPN Stats & Information

The Atlanta Braves were one of the best teams in in Fredi Gonzalez’s first three seasons as their manager. They won 279 games from 2011 to 2013, trailing the by one win for most in baseball.

Then in 2014 the Braves fell below .500 for just the third time since 1991. They then lost 95 games in 2015, their most since a 97-loss season in 1990, and their 9-28 start this season is worse than that of the 1962 , who went 12-25 in their first 37 games on their way to a modern-era-record 120 losses.

On Tuesday, Gonzalez was fired in the Braves’ final season at Turner Field.

How bad did things get?

On top of starting worse than the '62 Mets, the Braves’ 28 losses this season are tied for the franchise's most through 37 games. The 1911 Boston Rustlers also started 9-28.

The team's worst 37-game start since moving to Atlanta in 1966 was 11-26 in 1988.

Part of the issue with the Braves has been massive roster turnover. The Braves have used 39 players this season, most in MLB. Freddie Freeman is the only player who started for the Braves on Opening Day in 2011 who is still with the team.

The Braves' offense bottomed out in Gonzalez’s final 37 games with the team.

Their OPS of .594 this season is more than 60 points worse than that of the next-closest team, the . The Braves’ team OPS is nine points higher than the MLB average for batters hitting ninth in lineups, including pitchers in the National League.

Eleven individual hitters have at least as many home runs as all Braves combined (11), including Yoenis Cespedes, and within the NL East.

The pitching hasn’t been much better over the years. Atlanta’s team ERA was 3.18 in 2013. It rose to 3.38 in 2014 and 4.41 in 2015, and is 4.49 this season.

The Braves' once-dominant bullpen had an ERA of 2.46 in 2013, but that number is up to 4.78 this season.

What are the odds?

Few expected the Braves to start this poorly, but their 2016 outlook has not been good from the start.

Entering this season, Atlanta tied for last in its odds to win the division (80-1), win the pennant (250-1) and win the World Series (500-1), according to the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook.

Atlanta's over/under win total was the lowest in the league at 66.5.

USA Today

Braves fire Fredi Gonzalez after 9-28 start, to name Brian Snitker interim manager

USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves, on track for the worst season in the franchise's 130-year history, have fired manager Fredi Gonzalez.

Gonzalez will be replaced on an interim basis byClass AAA manager Brian Snitker..

Gonzalez, 52, managed the Braves to the 2013National League East title and a 2012 wild-card game appearance, but could do little to prop up a rebuilding project the past two seasons as the club gears up for a move into a new, suburban stadium in 2017. The Braves are off to a 9-28 start, and their .243 winning percentage puts them on course for the worst season in club history since the 1935 Boston Braves finished 38-115 (.248).

The firing ends a period of great managerial stability, as Gonzalez took over in 2011 for the retired Bobby Cox, who managed the Braves from 1991 to 2010, a span in which the club reached the playoffs 15 times, won five NL pennants and the .

Snitker, 60, played four minor league seasons as a catcher and has spent 34 years in the Braves organization, as a minor league manager and coach and a major league bullpen coach from 1988-90. The club is expected to launch a search for a permanent replacement as it gears up for the 2017 opening of SunTrust Park in Cobb County. The rebuilding process for that move from Turner Field accelerated the past two seasons, as general manager John Coppolella dealt away key parts like shortstop Andrelton Simmons, pitcher Shelby Miller, outfielder Justin Upton and closer Craig Kimbrel. The prospect return in those deals galvanized the Braves' system, but made competing at the major league level a near-impossible task.

"I want to be part of this when we get good," Gonzalez told USA TODAY Sports recently. "But the fans are into the winning and losing business. They want to win. What’s the old saying, “Don’t tell me about the pain, show me the baby?’ “Well, we can’t show you the baby right now, but we sure are feeling the pain.’’

Gonzalez is the first Braves manager to get fired since Russ Nixon in 1990. Cox took over midseason and in 1991, the Braves began a run of 14 consecutive playoff appearances.

Firing Fredi Gonzalez won't make the Braves good

By: Ted Berg | May 17, 2016 12:03 pm

The Atlanta Braves fired manager Fredi Gonzalez on Tuesday:

Fans of all 30 teams love to complain about managers’ particular personnel decisions, even if those are sometimes dictated by factors unknown to the public, and certainly one could find plenty times Gonzalez pushed the wrong buttons and cost the Braves.

But Atlanta entered this season with no apparent designs on contention in the club’s final season at Turner Field, and it’s hard to figure how Gonzalez deserved to be fired by May 17 even if the Braves sit squarely in last place with a 9-28 record. They stink, no doubt, and you can’t fire half the roster in one fell swoop. But if the Braves believed Gonzalez the right man to manage their club in February, nothing that happened in the season’s first 37 games should have changed their minds.

If Gonzalez were benching young players in favor of fill-in veterans on a rebuilding club, it might make sense for management to want to go in a different direction. But the club’s few 25-and-under position players on the big-league roster have seen plenty of opportunities to distinguish themselves whenever healthy. They just haven’t really done that: Center fielder Mallex Smith, who took over the club’s starting job at age 23 despite limited success in Class AAA ball, is hitting .236 with a .281 on-base percentage. Outfielder Ender Inciarte, one of the fruits of the offseason trade that sent Shelby Miller to the Diamondbacks, missed a month with injury and owns a .468 OPS in a tiny 47-at-bat sample in 2016. And 23- year-old infielder Daniel Castro has slumped to a .431 OPS.

And while maybe one could assert that those players might be flourishing under a different manager, it’d take some mental gymnastics to do that without crediting Gonzalez for the success of some of the Braves’ young starting pitchers. Julio Teheran, Matt Wisler, Mike Foltynewicz and Aaron Blair have all shown promise in the early parts of the 2016 campaign.

Few can say what, if anything, transpired behind closed doors to get Gonzalez canned, but it’s not like he’s some new personality in the organization that no one prepared for. Gonzalez helmed the Braves since 2011, and presided over three straight good teams before the club spiraled downward and began the dismantling process that led to the truly woeful 2016 roster Atlanta now trots out nightly.

And that’s the main thing: Even if the Braves had some good reason to fire Gonzalez in mid-May of a season in which practically every reasonable forecaster predicted them to finish last, whoever takes over the job — Class AAA manager Brian Snitker, for now — won’t magically inherit a good Major League team.

If firing Gonzalez represents the Braves’ attempt to show fans they’re not good with losing, they’re certainly sending mixed messages by fielding a team that includes all of one above-average big-league hitter — the utterly marooned Freddie Freeman. If it simply means new GM John Coppolella wanted to give Gonzalez some time to prove himself before finding his own guy, it makes more sense, but still seems a bit premature.

The Braves appear to be doing the right thing by punting in 2016 to build a better, more sustainable club in the future, even if it looks ugly in the process. But though it’s impossible from the outside to know whatever organizational thinking dictated the decision, firing Gonzalez at this point of the season for getting a bad team off to a bad start suggests the Braves are doing the right thing the wrong way.

Braves GM: Wouldn’t be fair to Fredi Gonzalez to keep him all season

John Perrotto, Special for USA TODAY Sports

PITTSBURGH — The Atlanta Braves are moving into a new ballpark next season and will have a new manager to lead them there.

Fredi Gonzalez was fired Tuesday and replaced on an interim basis by Brian Snitker, who is in his 40th year in the organization and was managing the Class AAA Gwinnett farm club.

Snitker will stay on the job through the remainder of the season and the Braves will then begin their search for a permanent replacement while getting set to leave Turmer Field for SunTrust Park in suburban Cobb County. The Braves have the worst record in the major leagues at 9-28.

“We decided that we didn’t want Fredi to be our manager beyond this season,” general manager John Coppolella said before the Braves played the at PNC Park. “We thought about just keeping him for the rest of the season but that wouldn’t have been fair to him.

“We just felt it was time to make the change now. Hopefully, a new voice will help. There is still 4 ½ months left this season. It’s not over yet and hopefully Brian will bring a fresh voice.”

Snitker was on the major league coaching staff from 2007-13. Like Gonzalez, he is a protégé of Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox.

“I feel like I’ve just kind of been dropped right into the middle of the clubhouse,” Snitker said. “It’s a little surreal but I’m excited for the opportunity. I feel I’m ready for it. I’m been preparing it for a long time.

“It’s bittersweet, though. Fredi is a good friend and I feel badly for what happened to me. But we all know this business, when things are going bad, something is going to happen.”

The Braves had two former major league managers on the coaching staff in third base coach Bo Porter and bench coach Carlos Tosca. However, they fired Tosca and bypassed Porter in favor of Snitker.

“We want to get back to the Braves’ way,” Coppolella said. “Brian has been in this organization for a long time. He was here when we’ve had great success. He understands what we need to do to get back to that.”

However, the Braves’ current roster isn’t built for success. They have a lineup comprised primary of journeymen who has just 11 home runs in 37 games and a rotation filled with inexperienced pitchers beyond right-hander Julio Teheran.

“This is not Freddy’s fault whatsoever,” Braves president of baseball operations John Hart said. “We knew coming into this season that wins might be tough to come back. It’s not for a lack of effort. Our guys are playing hard. We’re playing a lot of close games but we’re just not finishing the job. Hopefully, that can change with Brian here.”

Snitker is familiar with many of the Braves’ players after managing them at Gwinnett. That quickly donned on him during a team meeting on Tuesday.

“I’m standing in the middle of the clubhouse and started realizing that most of the guys have already heard this speech,” Snitker said. “We have some talented players on this team. I think we can win some games. I’m excited to get started and see what we can do.”

Yahoo! Sports

The embarrassing way Fredi Gonzalez found out Braves were firing him

By Mike Oz

When the Atlanta Braves told Fredi Gonzalez on Tuesday morning that he'd been relieved of his duties as manager, it wasn't much of a surprise. He'd been on the hot seat since last year and found himself in a no-win situation this year, considering the front office had dismantled the team to accelerate a rebuild.

But there was another reason Gonzalez wasn't surprised: He had found out — inadvertently — on Monday night when he was e-mailed his airline itinerary back to Atlanta. That's according to a new report from David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which is both hilarious and unfortunate.

In what may be a fire-your-coach gaffe for the ages, the Braves actually scheduled Gonzalez flight home before they fired them, and didn't realize Gonzalez would get an email update with his flight plans. The team was on the road, playing the Pittsburgh Pirates until Thursday, so Gonzalez put two and two together. Oof.

From the AJC:

The Braves had already made the decision to fire him and booked his commercial flight home Tuesday, but didn’t plan to tell him he’d been fired until Tuesday morning, after president of baseball operations John Hart flew to Pittsburgh to join general manager John Coppolella.

Later Monday night after getting the email, Gonzalez eventually had confirmed by Braves top officials what he already was certain about by then: He was fired.

Count this as one of the times automated technology doesn't make life better. Gonzalez, 52, had been with the Braves since 2011, amassing a record of 434-413. While he had to know the hammer was coming eventually — especially considering his team's MLB-worst 9-28 record through Monday — putting together the pieces of the plan through a flight schedule isn't the ideal way to end a five-year run in Atlanta. But as Lane Kiffin might say: It's better than getting kicked off the team bus to get canned. So, uhhh, look on the bright side, Fredi. At least you had a ticket home.

The New York Post

The next Braves manager will have it much easier

By Joel Sherman

Even with his job in peril, Fredi Gonzalez was hoping to hold on, even beyond the obvious reason: that no one wants to be fired.

The Braves manager saw the young talent that had been accumulated in the past 18 months, mainly in trades of veterans for prospects, and recognized what the opening of a new Cobb County stadium next year could mean for adding payroll. So two weeks ago in New York, Gonzalez told me how much he yearned to survive the bad times to benefit from what he expected to be the good so close ahead.

He didn’t make it.

Gonzalez became the first manager fired this year, getting dismissed Tuesday. Brian Snitker, a Braves employee since 1977 and their Triple-A skipper the past two-plus years, will replace Gonzalez on an interim basis. He is known as a good communicator and no-nonsense. In a coincidence, he replaced Gonzalez as Atlanta’s third base coach when Gonzalez became the Marlins manager after the 2006 campaign.

Former Padres manager Bud Black and MLB Network analyst Mark DeRosa – both well regarded by Braves president of baseball operations John Hart – are seen as strong candidates for a full-time role that is viewed as desirable because of the young talent and new stadium.

Gonzalez’s job was in jeopardy after last year, but he has always had a strong backer in the man he replaced, Bobby Cox, who continues to wield influence in the organization. However, even within a rebuild this year, Atlanta wanted to show improvement going into the new stadium. Instead, the Braves were a major league-worst 9-28, which made them 34-81 since a 42-42 start last year.

It did not help Gonzalez that the Phillies, who are also rebuilding, were 22-17 in the NL East or that he was not considered a strong strategist, especially when it came to running a bullpen.

But there also was no denying he had a poor team. A.J. Pierzynski ($3 million) was the highest-paid free agent signed in an offseason when the trend to deal veterans for future assets continued with the dealing of Shelby Miller and Andrelton Simmons.

The acquisition last year of Hector Olivera blew up when he was put on administrative leave within the domestic abuse protocol. Thus, a club that was going to struggle for power lost more – the Braves have just 11 homers, 18 fewer than any other club. Freddie Freeman (6) is the only Brave with more than one homer.

CBS Sports

From Bud Black to Terry Pendleton, the candidates to be next Braves manager

As the Braves get set to move into a new ballpark in 2017, they'll be looking for a permanent manager in the wake of the Fredi Gonzalez firing

By Dayn Perry

The Braves on Tuesday parted ways with manager Fredi Gonzalez, who'd been on the job since 2011. The Braves, who are in the midst of a deep rebuild, were expected to be a bad team in 2016, but a 9-28 start has "surpassed" even the most bearish of forecasts. As the team gets set to reboot in a new suburban ballpark starting in 2017, they're likely ready to enter the next phase of the cycle and, ideally, move toward contention, possibly as soon as 2018. The question for the front office is thus: Who best to lead them in the dugout?

Let's take a look at some potential candidates to fill the job in Atlanta on a permanent basis ...

Brian Snitker

Snitker, 60, was named interim manager on Tuesday and reportedly will manage the team for the remainder of the 2016 season. He's been the manager of Triple-A Gwinnett since the start of the 2014 season. Prior to that, Snitker spent seven seasons as the Braves' third base coach. Snitker knows the system, obviously -- including many players presently on the roster -- and as a minor-league manager in that very same system, he's accustomed to handling young and untested talents. On that point, the Braves have a lot of young and untested talents on the way. The next permanent manager's most important job will be helping all these high-ceiling prospects that the Braves have compiled transition to the highest level. Snitker for the rest of 2016 has a chance to prove he can do that. Maybe he's not the favorite, but let's recall that Pete Mackanin recently rose from interim to permanent choice in Philadelphia under similar circumstances. Bud Black

Black, 58, was of course the longtime manager of the Padres, and his name was recently floated by Bob Nightengale as a candidate in Atlanta. With San Diego, Black compiled a 649-713 record. Black was also a successful big-league starting pitcher for 15 years and later a pitching coach, and that's bound to have appeal to the Braves, who have a lot of young pitching in the pipeline.

Terry Pendleton

Pendleton, who won an MVP for the Braves as a player, has been a member of the Braves' coaching staff for 15 years. From 2002-10, he served as hitting coach, and since then he's been first base coach. Now 55, Pendleton has before been named as a candidate to manage Atlanta, and he provides a direct link to the Bobby Cox glory years. As well, Pendleton, as an African-American, would be a minority hire, which MLB has long encouraged.

Dave Martinez

The 51-year-old Martinez, Joe Maddon's longtime bench coach in Tampa and now with the Cubs, remains a hot managerial candidate who's been linked with any number of vacancies. Needless to say, with Maddon's Cubs looking like a juggernaut this far in 2016, Martinez's appeal is only growing. But would Martinez prefer to hold out for a team that's more established on the success cycle than the Braves are right now? For what it's worth, Martinez spent his final season as a player with the Braves in 2001.

Torey Lovullo

Lovullo, 50, is 's bench coach in Boston, and he also earned rave reviews while managing the Sox while Farrell was battling cancer last season. Like Martinez, he's one of the hottest managerial prospects around, and the bench coach role typically provides a natural transition. As Rob Bradford tweets, Lovullo's contract with the Red Sox permits him to interview for managerial vacancies during the season. If the Braves opt not to keep Snitker in the job, then consider Lovullo to be a strong contender.

Mark DeRosa

If you're looking for a longshot, then maybe it's DeRosa, 41. Joel Sherman of the New York Post recently name-checked DeRosa as a candidate in Atlanta, citing his popularity with some highly placed members of the front office. As well, DeRosa was drafted by the Braves in 1996 and spend the first seven seasons of his big-league career in Atlanta.

David Ross

My colleague Matt Snyder put forth Ross' name as another longshot contender. It indeed makes sense. Ross is a Georgia native who grew up in north , and he's in the final year of his playing career. He earns universal praise for his demeanor and clubhouse presence, and so often wind up as managers. No, he doesn't have any managerial experience, but neither did recent and semi-recent hires like , Brad Ausmus, and Kevin Cash -- catchers, all.

Mostly, consider all of this to be ... developing.

Baseball America

Braves Fire Gonzalez, Promote Snitker

By J.J. Cooper

The Braves, in the midst of a rebuilding plan that has them focused on 2017 and the opening of SunTrust Park, have fired manager Fredi Gonzalez after the team’s 9-28 start, the worst record in the majors. Gonzalez is the first manager the Braves have fired since general manager Bobby Cox fired Russ Nixon in 1990 and appointed himself manager.

Brian Snitker, who had been the Braves’ Triple-A Gwinnett manager since 2014 and a member of the Braves organization for 40 years, was named the interim manager.

Gonzalez, 52, succeeded the retiring Cox as manager in 2011 and led the team to a wild-card appearance in 2012 and the NL East title in 2013. He ends his tenure with a 434-413 record despite the past three losing seasons. He was also 276-279 in three seasons managing the Marlins before being fired in June 2010 despite two winning seasons.

The Braves also fired bench coach Carlos Tosca.

This will be the first big league managerial opportunity for Snitker, 60, after a lifetime in the game. His pro playing career began in the Braves’ organization in 1977 as a catcher. He retired after the 1980 season and became a 25-year-old roving instructor for the Braves in 1981. He became a manager in 1982 and has served as a minor league manager, coach or major league coach ever since. There are a lot of managers, coaches and instructors around baseball who have modeled themselves after Snitker. Snitker’s players over the years are vociferous in their respect and admiration for him. Righthander Byron Embry played for Snitker at the start of a nearly decade in pro ball that included time in Triple-A. He is works with high school players in Colorado.

“Because of his personality everyone who played for him has a little Brian Snitker in him,” Embry said. “We went through a phase where we lost eight straight. We won one and then lost another nine. Snitker said nothing. How come he didn’t flip out? We then went on a 12 game winning streak. He never changed.

“I was getting turned around on my fastball and walking people. He called me in and told me ‘We brought you in here to rear back and throw it. It changed my life. That motto has been my M.O. ever since. Do everything full speed because you have a gift for it. Having him tell me that. It was simple. It was matter of fact, but I take it as life principle.

Troy Cameron is another example. Cameron was a 1997 first-round pick of the Braves who played for Snitker in three different seasons–(1998 in Macon, 2000 and 2001 in Myrtle Beach). He’s now the head high school baseball coach at Fort Lauderdale’s St. Thomas Aquinas High, one of the better baseball programs in the state of Florida. And as Cameron explains it, he’s a coach because of Brian Snitker.

“I model myself after him,” Cameron said.

Cameron spent eight seasons in the minors. He reached Triple-A. But it’s his interactions with Snitker that remain among his best baseball memories, including one unexpected night in 2001.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Cameron said. “We had just got done playing in the Carolina-California League All Star Game. So we all had to fly to California and back. Me, Snit, (Ryan) Langerhans and (Wilson) Betemit. It was our first game back. Snit gave us three the day off.

“After the game SportsCenter was on in the clubhouse in Wilmington. And they said ‘there’s been a big trade between the Indians and Braves.’ Someone turns to me and says ‘you just got traded.’

Snit calls me in and tells me, go back to your hotel room and wait for a phone call. I can’t tell you. But when you get done, you need to come to my room.”

Cameron was part of a four-player deal that sent and Cameron to Cleveland for relievers and Steve Reed. After struggling to hit in his first three seasons in Class A, Cameron was in the midst of the best season his career.

“I get back to the hotel and I get a phone call from Neal Huntington welcoming me to the Indians. So when I get off the phone, I go knock on Snit’s door. The room is pitch black. There’s a bottle of vodka. He tells me to sit down and he makes me a drink. He tears up and is crying. He said “I’ve been turning in such good reports on you. You’ve turned it around. I want to see you in the big leagues. If I had known you would get traded, maybe I should have handed in crappy reports.’ ”

“I stayed in there about an hour. That hour I spent with him then summed up the three years I’ve played for him. That hour I spent with him gave validation to everything I was thinking and hoping.”

“That’s why I coach. I want to be Brian Snitker to someone.”

The Sporting News

Fredi Gonzalez firing is almost three years too late for Braves

By Jesse Spector

The end finally came for Fredi Gonzalez. It should hardly come as a surprise that the manager of a 9-28 team would be fired, but that also does not mean it makes complete sense.

At least, it makes sense that Gonzalez would be out of a job after the way the Braves have played. It's just, it makes sense that Gonzalez would be out of a job after the way the Braves have played for more than two years.

That the Braves are 9-28 this year surely is painful for them, but at least Atlanta has shown some progress yesterday, following a 4-17 startwith a mere 5-11 skid. This is a team that was built to lose, with no illusions of being a competitive team in the final year of Turner Field. The Braves may not have expected to be quite this bad, but you can also look at their schedule so far and understand losing 28 of 37.

The Braves started by dropping two games to the Nationals, then three to the Cardinals. They went to Washington and lost four more before sweeping the Marlins in Miami. After a home win against the Dodgers, Atlanta lost the last two games of that series, then got swept by the Mets in a three-game set and the Red Sox in two games before going to Fenway and splitting a pair. Atlanta managed a split at , too, proving something about baseball and what can happen on any given day. Then the Braves lost two of three to the Mets in New York, and returned home to get swept by the Diamondbacks and lose two of three to the Phillies. The current road trip started with two losses in three games in Kansas City before an 8-5 defeat at Pittsburgh on Monday in Gonzalez's final game.

With that early schedule, jam packed with contenders, the Braves’ best hope was probably something like 13-24. They have a 2-6 record in one-run games, and if you flip that around, 13-24 is exactly what you would get. Maybe if Freddie Freeman hadn’t opened the season in a slump, or if Julio Teheran hadn’t struggled with his control as much as he has, or if the Braves had more good players. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter, and never did, because the Braves are built to lose, and lose is what they are doing.

“Doing nothing is no longer an option,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradley wrote in April. “They can’t allow 4-17 to become 8- 34.”

They became 9-28, but why not 8-34? Seriously, who cares? Whether the Braves lose 100 games or 110 games this year is immaterial. The question that the Atlanta front office had to ask was whether Gonzalez is the right man for the actual task at hand. That would be teaching and instilling a professional workplace environment for a young team with more young players on the way as the summer goes on. If the answer to that was no, then fine.

If the Braves were going to fire Gonzalez for results-based baseball reasons, they should have done it after Game 4 of the 2013 NLDS, when Gonzalez saved Craig Kimbrel for a bottom of the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium that never happened after Juan Uribe’s two-run homer in the eighth off David Carpenter. They should have done it after the 2014 season, when Gonzalez presided over a team that was tied for the division lead at the All-Star break and went on to finish 17 games behind. They should have done it after last year’s 95-loss debacle, but instead gave Gonzalez and his coaching staff contract extensions in the middle of it.

As Bradley wrote last September, “By offering such extensions to a manager and coaches of a team that was five games below .500 at the break, the Two Johns (Hart and Coppolella, the front office brain trust) essentially said, ‘We’re about to gut this roster even more, and this is our way of saying nothing that happens will be held against you.’”

Unless something has changed behind the scenes to make the Braves believe that Gonzalez is not the right fit to command respect and help his players improve on a personal level while the team routinely gets slaughtered, there is no particular reason that a change has to be made now. If the idea last summer was that the teardown was going to continue — which it did — and that the results on the field would not be held against Gonzalez, using the results to justify Gonzalez’s dismissal makes less sense than at almost any other point in his tenure.

If the Braves don't believe Gonzalez is the person to lead them back to contention, by all means this is a sensible firing. There already is plenty of evidence in that column. Just don't pretend that a bunch of losses early in a season that the Atlanta front office punted before it started is appropriate justification.

The New York Times

How Bad Are the Braves? So Far, 1962 Mets Bad

By VICTOR MATHER

The Atlanta Braves have taken the path of so many bad teams and fired their manager, Fredi Gonzalez.

But the Braves are not just another bad baseball team. At the moment, they are on a pace to be one of the worst teams ever.

On Wednesday morning, the Braves sat at 9-29, a .237 winning percentage that projected over a whole season would put them at 38-124. That would be the worst record of the 162-game era. Should they keep up the abysmal pace, they would surpass the woeful 1962 Mets, who despite their legendary inability to play the game, did manage 40 wins.

It wasn’t that long ago when the Braves were good; they won 96 games and made the playoffs in 2013.

But after a disappointing 2014, the Braves remade their team, trading away Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Craig Kimbrel. Andrelton Simmons was shipped out in the last off-season.

Yet despite the fire sale, the Braves batters have not gotten any younger. Six of their eight regular starters are in their 30s.

These veterans are just not hitting the ball at the moment. Catcher A.J. Pierzynski, 39, is hitting .207; shortstop Erick Aybar, 32, is at .180. Outfielder Jeff Francoeur, 32, is at .238.

Collectively, the team is slugging a pitiful .313, worst in baseball, and has scored the fewest runs of any team.

The Braves’ worst category by far is home runs. The team totals for homers in the rest of the major leagues range from 55 (Mets, Orioles and Rays) to 30 (Phillies). The Braves have 13. That’s the same total as Nolan Arenado of the Rockies, the major league leader. Although the pitching is better, it is not good. The team E.R.A., 4.70, is fourth worst in the National League. The Braves do rank first in one category: wild pitches, with 23.

There are some bright spots, sort of. Unlike the batters, the pitching staff is young. Starters Matt Wisler and Julio Teheran, though a combined 1-7, both have E.R.A.s in the low 3s.

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Center fielder Mallex Smith, the youngster of the starting lineup at 23, is hitting a little, and first baseman Freddie Freeman, the other player in his 20s, at least has six homers.

The Braves have also been a little bit unlucky. Their ratio of 123 runs scored to 193 given up should have given them 12 wins, rather than nine.

Perhaps the biggest saving grace for the team is that it is not the only bad one out there. The Twins’ record, 10-28, is only one game better. The Reds’ run differential, minus-71, is actually worse.

It is not uncommon for teams in any sport to get out to extreme starts, then slip back to more reasonable performances as the season goes along. It certainly seems to be a reasonable guess to say the Braves will not be able to maintain their torridly bad pace, and the Mets’ record will be safe.

Those 1962 Mets statistics make for ugly reading. Playing their first season in the league, with mostly too old, too young or too untalented players, they were last in baseball in both batting average (.240) and E.R.A (5.04). It was the type of season most baseball fans thought they would never see again.

Maybe they were right. Maybe.

The Macon Telegraph

Atlanta Braves make right move with firing, hiring

BY BILL SHANKS

It’s never easy to fire someone. As much as we believe the decision to fire Fredi Gonzalez was easy for the Atlanta Braves, it likely wasn’t. The last time a manager had been fired by this organization was 1990, so this is not something that happens all the time.

But it was the right move. Gonzalez wasn’t all to blame for what was going on, but he didn’t help matters, either. The fact is, the Braves were not supposed to be this bad this season. Sure, they were supposed to be bad, but not this bad.

They were awful under Gonzalez, and the last glimpse of that came Monday in Pittsburgh. The team was lifeless, with a number of awful defensive plays and a glaring lack of effort by some players.

Gonzalez was simply terrible at managing a bullpen, whether there were good pitchers in his bullpen or not. He was terribly inconsistent in his decisions, and the lineup construction was downright humorous.

He was never going to be the Braves’ manager in 2017, when the sparkling new SunTrust Park opens. Atlanta’s performance in the first 37 games this season was simply the final nail in Gonzalez’s managerial coffin.

It’s about accountability, and while it’s never all a manager’s fault when something like this happens, the blame usually falls right at his door. There was plenty to pin on Gonzalez during the past five-plus seasons.

Gonzalez’s overall resume was just not that impressive. What about the September collapses in 2011 and 2013? What about his bad decision to not use Craig Kimbrel in the playoff game against the in 2013? What about the underperforming 79-83 team in 2014?

Since last season, when the Braves started 42-42, the team had gone 34-81, a dreadful .296 winning percentage. That’s the worst stretch in the 51- year history of this franchise.

So now the Braves move on. The angst about when Gonzalez will be fired is now over. For now, Brian Snitker will be the manager. Yes, that’s the same Brian Snitker who managed the Macon Braves in 1992 and 1997-98.

This was the best decision the Braves could have made. Snitker is the perfect choice to lead this team for the remaining 125 games. They could have gone with Eddie Perez, the bullpen coach. But Perez wants to be a manager. The Braves didn’t need someone to lobby for the job all summer.

They need someone to steady this sinking ship. They needed Snitker. Snitker is a Braves lifer. He first signed with the team as a non-drafted free agent in 1977. Snitker played for the Braves in the minors for three years, and then he turned to coaching. Hank Aaron and the late, great Bobby Dews were instrumental in developing Snitker into a fine baseball man.

Snitker was in his 20th season as a Braves minor league manager when he got the call late Monday night to head to Pittsburgh. He has been on the Atlanta coaching staff several times, first in 1985 under , then in the late-1980s under Russ Nixon. Bobby Cox brought Snitker back to the big leagues in 2007 to be his third-base coach.

Frank Wren, the since-fired general manager, demoted Snitker to Triple-A after the 2013 season. It was a power-play between Wren and Gonzalez, as Wren wanted his own man in the clubhouse. But Snitker, the organizational man, took it professionally and did what he needed to do for the organization.

Much is made about the phrase, “The Braves Way.” John Schuerholz loves to mention it. I even used it in a book about the team a decade ago. It’s now being tossed around again as something the Braves need to get back to. Well, Snitker is “The Braves Way.” He’s all about what this organization stands for, and not many have been around longer to appreciate what it means to wear that uniform.

Snitker is a good communicator. Players always have had good things to say about the way he treats them in a clubhouse. He always has gotten good marks on developing pitchers, and you can believe Snitker will treat these young starting pitchers, who have given us a reason to watch, carefully during the next four-plus months.

He learned from Aaron, coached for Cox and now will get his chance. Maybe Snitker is only up for the rest of the season, but no one will ever be able to take this away from him. He will do what’s best for the Braves, for the organization and not what’s best for himself.

Sure, he’ll want to win. But this will be all about getting these players ready to win down the road. It will be about development, not about a record to try and save a manager’s job.

Maybe the players will respond. Maybe they will play harder and be better. Maybe Snitker will leave his starting pitchers in longer and have better lineups. But anything will be better than what the Braves have gone through the past 37 games.

WSB-TV

Atlanta Braves fire manager Fredi González

ATLANTA — The Atlanta Braves have fired manager Fredi González after one of the worst starts to a season in Braves history.

Channel 2's Zach Klein reports González, who has been the team's manager for more than five years, was told after another loss on Monday that he was being fired.

Braves General Manager John Coppolella said Tuesday that the decision to fire Gonzalez was not all Gonzalez’ fault.

He says the locker room needed a new voice and you can’t fire the players.

Sources close to Klein say there was a feeling among the front office that Gonzalez was never going to be back next season. The team wanted a new manager to take over in the new ballpark and they knew Gonzalez was not the long term solution, so they said it was best to do it now.

Triple-A manager Brian Snitker will take over, according to an MLB source.

CURRENT STANDINGS

The numbers for the Braves are dismal. They have lost two straight and eight of 10, have baseball's worst record at 9-28 and already are 13 1/2 games out of first place in the NL East.

The Braves are 2-17 at home and 7-11 on the road.

They lost 8-5 to the Pittsburgh Pirates Monday night. Jeff Francoeur hit his first home run for the Braves since June 2009.

Gonzalez is the first Braves manager to be fired since Russ Nixon was let go in June 1990.

FINAL SEASON AT TURNER FIELD

This is the final season the Braves will be playing at Turner Field. They will begin to call SunTrust Park in Cobb County home beginning in 2017.

The stadium is currently under construction. Gonzalez, who replaced Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox in 2010, was in his sixth season as the Braves manager. He was 276-279 in four seasons with the Marlins.

Fredi the Fall Guy

By: Anthony Amey

ATLANTA —There once was a very popular song by the late Curtis Mayfield called "Freddie's Dead." It peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, part of Mayfield's famous "Superfly" soundtrack album in 1972.

The name of the song, spelling of the name aside, can also be associated with the Braves managerial tenure of Fredi Gonzalez. In this case, Fredi's tenure in Atlanta is dead, through no fault of his own.

Frankly, it's miraculous that Gonzalez managed to squeeze nine wins out of 37 games from the team assembled. The Braves' 9-28 record is the worst in all of Major League Baseball.

Gonzalez has stuck to the company line throughout, urging patience while the organization has put together a roster that will pay dividends not now, but in the future.

The problem is, very few managers or head coaches in any sport are awarded the same patience by management.

The Braves' active roster includes 10 of its 25 players who are 25 or younger. Clearly, the plan is to suffer now in hopes that the young players gain valuable experience on their way to significantly improving in time to help fill up brand-new SunTrust Park, set to open in the spring of 2017.

The team ranks 29 out of 30 teams in batting average, and its 11 home runs rank dead last in MLB. Is that the manager's fault?

Gonzalez ranks fifth on the franchise's all-time wins list with 434 in his five-plus seasons managing the Braves, and he guided the team to two postseason appearances and a National League East Division title in 2013.

The team picked up the 2016 extension on the contracts of Gonzalez and his staff last July, but the deals had a club option for 2017, so after this season, the Braves will owe Gonzalez no future money.

The Braves promoted 60-year-old Brian Snitker from Triple-A Gwinnett to take over on an interim basis. This marks his 40th season with the Braves organization.

So the question now becomes: Will the team go after a big-name manager for big money heading into its new ballpark? Or will it offer Snitker the job after assessing his performance over the final 125 games?

Only time will tell, but most everyone could tell before the season started that this would be the franchise's third consecutive losing season, its longest such streak since seven straight sub-.500 years from 1984 to 1990.

In "Superfly," Freddie died after being hit by a car. In this case, Fredi appears to have been stabbed in the back by management who stacked the deck against him.

WAGA-TV (FOX)

FOX 5's weighs in on Braves firing Fredi Gonzalez

By: Cody Chaffins

ATLANTA - FOX 5's Ron Gant has been through this before. He was a member of the Atlanta Braves the last time that the team fired a manager. That was Russ Nixon back in 1990.

Gant said that the Braves firing Fredi Gonzalez was no surprise. “You hear rumblings and you know things can happen, but you don't know when it's going to happen, if it does," said Gant. “You kind of knew it was headed that way, just with how poorly the team has been playing so far this season.”

At 9-28, the Braves have the worst record in baseball. “I expected more out of them. I knew they were going to be young, but have a lot of really good talent and can be a talented team," said Gant. Gant was a part of the Braves' rebuilding project in the late 80's and early 90's that lead to unprecedented success. “They're actually doing what we did back then, which was getting some good young talent in the minor leagues, which they have, develop those guys and bring them up through your system, and add a couple of pieces once they get there," said Gant.

The Braves have named Triple-A manager Brian Snitker as the team's interim manager. Snitker has been with the Braves organization since 1977 and was there when Gant was drafted by the Braves in 1983. ‘He is a true professional. He was my manager in Double-A when I was called up; very no nonsense type of guy. Knows how to control a clubhouse, knows how to control the players,” said Gant.

The Sports Xchange

Pirates hang on to beat Braves

By John Perrotto

PITTSBURGH — Francisco Cervelli, who signed a contract extension earlier in the day, was one of four Pirates with hits as they built a 9-0 lead then held on for a 12-9 victory over Atlanta on Tuesday night, ruining the debut of Braves interim manager Brian Snitker.

The Pirates had a season-high 21 hits in winning their third straight game with everyone in the starting lineup having at least one.

John Jaso, Andrew McCutchen and Gregory Polanco also had three hits each. Matt Joyce, Josh Harrison and winning pitcher Juan Nicasio had two apiece.

Jaso, McCutchen and Cervelli drove in two runs. Cervelli agreed to a three-year, $31-million deal that runs through the 2019 season.

The Braves battled back under Snitker, who replaced the fired Fredi Gonzalez, but lost for the 10th time in the last 12 games to fall to 9-29, the worst mark in the major leagues. They are 20 games under .500 for the first time since 1911 when the franchise was located in Boston and known as the Rustlers.

Snitker, who has been in the organization since 1977, was managing the Triple-A Gwinnett farm club. He will remain on the job through the end of the season and the Braves will then begin a search for the skipper who will take over when they move into a new ballpark, SunTrust Park, next season in suburban Cobb County.

Gonzalez was in his sixth season on the job after taking over for Hall of Famer Bobby Cox at the start of the 2011 season.

Rookie outfielder Mallex Smith had the first two-homer game of his career for the Braves. Gordon Beckham had three hits while Ender Inciarte, Reid Brignac Nick Markakis added two each as Atlanta had 14.

Nicasio (4-3) struggled through five innings for the win, giving up five runs — three earned — and eight hits in five innings.

Mark Melancon pitched a scoreless ninth for his 13th save in 14 chances.

Rookie Aaron Blair (0-3) was rocked for nine runs in 1 1/3 innings.

The Pirates erupted for seven runs in the first inning as Jaso led off with a single and took third on Polanco’s one-out double.

Jung Ho Kang then hit a grounder to third baseman Gordon Beckham, who threw home. However, catcher A.J. Pierzynski dropped the throw for an error, allowing Jaso to score.

RBI singles by Cerveilli, Harrison and Nicasio extended the lead to 4-0 before Jaso hit a two-run double and McCutchen capped the inning with an RBI single.

Blair was chased during a two-run second that pushed the Pirates’ lead to 9-0. Polanco led off with a double and scored on a double by Cervelli, who came home on Jordy Mercer’s single.

The Braves got within 9-5 with three runs in the third inning and two more in fifth.

Reliever Bud Norris led off the third with his first career triple and Smith followed with his first home run of the night. Beckham singled home the final run of the inning.

A grounder by Freddie Freeman knocked in the first run of the fifth and the second scored on a double play.

The Pirates countered with two runs in the bottom of the fifth to increase their lead to 11-5 on an RBI single by McCutchen and a run-producing ground out by Polanco. NOTES: Pirates C Francisco Cervelli signed a three-year, $31-million contract extension prior to the game. The 30-year-old would have become eligible for free agency at the end of this season. … Atlanta SS Erick Aybar was not in the lineup a night after being slow to react to a pair of ground balls that eluded his reach for singles. Acquired from the Los Angeles Angles in an offseason trade for SS Andrelton Simmons and two pitching prospects, Aybar is hitting just .181 with four extra-base hits, two stolen bases, five RBIs and seven runs scored. … Braves RHP Julio Teheran (0-4, 3.17 ERA) is scheduled to start against Pirates LHP Francisco Liriano (3-2, 4.99 ERA) on Wednesday.

Associated Press

Pirates spoil Snitker's debut as manager, top Braves 12-9

By WILL GRAVES (AP Sports Writer)

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- There are nights when Gregory Polanco will head to the dugout after an at-bat knowing it will be a while before he gets another turn at the plate.

Tuesday was not one of those nights.

The Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder - moonlighting in left field instead of his usual spot in right while Starling Marte is on paternity leave - ripped three doubles in a 12-9 victory over the Atlanta Braves.

Pittsburgh jumped on Atlanta starter Aaron Blair for nine runs then held on late while pounding out a season-high 21 hits.

''You have to stay ready because you're hitting one inning and next thing you know, you might hit again,'' Polanco said.

John Jaso, Andrew McCutchen and Francisco Cervelli also had three hits for the Pirates, who have won three straight and spoiled interim manager Brian Snitker's debut with the Braves. Juan Nicasio (4-3) survived five innings to pick up the win.

Mark Melancon worked the ninth for his 13th save and third in as many games, the closer was pressed into service after the front end of the bullpen scuffled despite being staked to a sizable lead.

Mallex Smith hit two homers for the Braves, playing hours after manager Fredi Gonzalez was fired after five-plus seasons with Atlanta languishing in last place in the NL East. Rookie Aaron Blair (0-3) failed to make it out of the second inning as the Braves fell to a major-league worst 9-29.

''We've been fighting all year,'' Smith said. ''I've been saying that the whole time. We just got to get two things to go together. It seems like when our pitching is there our bats haven't been and then vice versa. Right now we're just waiting for it all to click.''

Atlanta general manager John Coppolella refused to blame Gonzalez for the team's current state but stressed the need for a fresh voice. Enter Snitker, a lifer in the organization whose nomadic journey over the last four decades has included five different stints managing one of the club's minor league affiliates.

Thrust into a 125-game tryout for the permanent gig, Snitker told the Braves - several of whom he coached on their way to the majors - that he would need time to get a feel for things.

The start of his tenure looked awfully familiar to Gonzalez's final weeks, though Snitker was hardly complaining after watching his new team press until the final out.

''It was just kind of neat to watch how they just kept throwing up those at-bats and grinding out at-bats,'' Snitker said. ''Things happened, but we were a hit away again. I liked what I saw. I liked the energy in the dugout and everybody's kind of just into the game.''

Blair is among the core the Braves hope to build around as they retool heading into 2017. The 23-year-old, a former first-round draft pick by Arizona acquired by Atlanta last year, was solid if not spectacular in his first four major league starts but struggled in his fifth.

The Pirates jumped on Blair for seven runs in the first inning, though two fielding errors did little to help him. Nicasio chipped in a two-run single during the barrage, an outburst that might have continued unabated if Jaso wasn't thrown out at home to end the inning.

Blair fared no better in the second, leaving after getting just one out and being charged with two more runs.

''Pretty much everything was up in the zone and in the middle of the plate, and a good-hitting team, I guess that's what happens,'' Blair said.

BIG LEAGUE MOMENT

Pittsburgh rookie Alen Hanson entered as a pinch hitter in the fifth inning and beat out an infield single for his first hit in the majors. Hanson moved to third on a botched pickoff attempt and later scored. He plans to send the baseball back to his mother in the Dominican Republic as a souvenir.

''This has been a long promise for my mom, to play in the big leagues,'' Hanson said. ''(I want to) send that to her as a gift to say 'Hey we made it.''' UP NEXT

Braves: Julio Teheran (0-4, 3.17) looks for his first victory of the season on Wednesday. Atlanta is averaging just 2.12 runs per game when Teheran starts this season.

Pirates: Francisco Liriano (3-2, 4.99 ERA) will try to bounce back from a bumpy outing against the Cubs last weekend when he gave up eight runs in 4 2/3 innings. Liriano is 2-1 with a 3.60 ERA in four career starts versus the Braves.

Braves-Pirates Preview

By TAYLOR BECHTOLD (STATS Writer)

Francisco Cervelli wasted little time living up to his contract extension Tuesday, while the Atlanta Braves looked exactly like the club that got its manager fired.

Now Cervelli will try to help the Pittsburgh Pirates continue their offensive dominance in this series Wednesday night when they look to complete their first three-game home sweep of the major league-worst Braves in 22 years.

Shortly after inking a $31 million, three-year deal Tuesday that runs from 2017-19, Cervelli had an RBI single and an RBI double in his first two at- bats before adding a single and a as the Pirates held on for a 12-9 victory.

''The most important thing is what we have in the clubhouse: coaches, teammates. It's just special,'' said Cervelli, who has four RBIs in the series.

Gregory Polanco also had a special day with three doubles, while John Jaso and Andrew McCutchencontributed three hits and two RBIs apiece as Pittsburgh (21-17) matched a season high in runs and reached a new mark with 21 hits.

With Polanco going 6 for 8, the Pirates have totaled 20 runs and 35 hits while moving in position for their first home sweep of Atlanta since April 29-May 1, 1994.

However, things could get more difficult as they go after their fourth straight victory. Braves right-hander Julio Teheran has a 1.44 ERA over his last five starts.

Teheran, though, is still searching for his first victory thanks in part to a 2.79 run-support average that ranks among the worst in the majors.

"You just try to keep going forward," he told the league's official website. "Just try to concentrate on my job. I'm glad about the way I've been pitching."

Teheran (0-4, 3.17 ERA) will try to pick up an overworked bullpen after Aaron Blair allowed nine runs over 1 1/3 innings Tuesday in the team's first game since manager Fredi Gonzalez was fired after five-plus seasons earlier in the day.

The Braves (9-29), led on an interim basis by former Triple-A Gwinnett manager Brian Snitker, are on pace for the franchise's worst season in nearly 30 years.

''We all assume a lot of responsibility," director of baseball operations John Hart explained. "That being said, we do think we're better than what we've played.''

Atlanta finished with season highs in runs and hits (15) after averaging just 2.7 runs over its previous 24 games. Mallex Smith had the first two- homer game of his career, while Gordon Beckham had his first three-hit game of the season.

"It seems like when our pitching is there our bats haven't been and then vice versa," Smith said. "Right now we're just waiting for it all to click.''

The Braves hope to keep Francisco Liriano (3-2, 4.99) scuffling after he surrendered eight runs and nine hits - including three homers - over 4 2/3 innings in Friday's 9-4 loss at Wrigley Field. It was the second-most earned runs he's given up behind a 10-run, 12-hit dud over 2 1/3 at Coors Field in August 2013.

"You can't make that many mistakes at this level," Liriano said.

The left-hander has gone 2-1 with a 3.60 ERA while limiting the Braves to two runs or less in three of his four career meetings. Freddie Freeman is 3 for 4 in the matchup, but Jeff Francoeur and Beckham are a combined 4 for 39.

Braves fire manager Fredi Gonzalez with majors' worst record

By WILL GRAVES (AP Sports Writer)

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- As the losses piled up one after another, the burden of unmet expectations - no matter how modest - weighed on Fredi Gonzalez.

Saddled with the worst record in the majors and a rebuilding project whose timetable will be measured in years, the Atlanta Braves finally relieved the pressure on their embattled manager Tuesday, firing Gonzalez and replacing him with Brian Snitker in hopes of trying to salvage something out of an already forgettable 2016.

''It was wearing on him, how we were playing and what was going on,'' director of baseball operations John Hart said. ''We just thought this was the right thing to do.''

The Braves entered Tuesday just 9-28 and on pace for the franchise's worst season in nearly 30 years, done in by injuries, roster moves that haven't worked out, a shaky bullpen and a struggling offense.

While Hart and general manager John Coppolella expected growing pains as the Braves tried to generate momentum heading into a new suburban ballpark next spring, they didn't expect Atlanta to bottom out so quickly and so completely.

Yet when Gonzalez tried to make the right moves in search of something - anything really - nothing happened. Atlanta opened the season with a nine-game losing streak. Heading into Tuesday night's game in Pittsburgh the Braves ranked either last or next-to-last in the majors in runs, home runs, batting average and .

Though both Hart and Coppolella stressed the team's problems were not Gonzalez's fault, when they decided in recent days the 52-year-old would not be back in 2017 no matter what, they opted to make a change.

''Our bad start is not just laid at the foot of Fredi Gonzalez,'' Hart said. ''We all assume a lot of responsibility. That being said, we do think we're better than what we've played.''

Enter Snitker, who has spent the last four decades as a player, coach or manager in the organization, most recently with Triple-A Gwinnett. Coppolella pointed to Snitker's familiarity with the team's high-end prospects as a significant factor in the promotion, one Snitker considers bittersweet.

''When things go like they have been, somebody's got to go,'' Snitker said.

Gonzalez went 434-413 in five-plus seasons in Atlanta, including leading the Braves to the NL East title in 2013, their 17th postseason appearance in 22 years. Yet what began as a slow slide in 2014 accelerated quickly over the last 10 months. Atlanta went 34-81 in Gonzalez's last 115 games, a freefall abetted by a front office decision to dump experienced (and in some cases expensive) players like Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Andrelton Simmons in exchange for young pitchers.

Though Coppolella and Hart remain committed to the team's long-term vision, they grew increasingly impatient with the missteps in the present.

''At the end of it, at some point you've got to put a product out there that's going to respectable and we just think there's more in it,'' Hart said. ''We've got a lot of season left.''

Even if there's almost no chance of contending in the NL East this summer. The Braves are the only team in the division with a losing record and already are more than a dozen games back of first-place Washington less than a quarter of the way through.

It's not the bridge year they had in mind while trying to nurture a pitching staff it considers the bedrock of the future. Early season injuries to outfielder Ender Inciarte and third baseman Gordon Beckham haven't helped, neither has a 2-17 mark at Turner Field.

The Braves are asking the 60-year-old Snitker to give the clubhouse a chance to exhale. He met with the players early Tuesday afternoon, saying he'd need time to get a feel for the job but promising to stay upbeat.

''I told them they're good players,'' Snitker said. ''The record isn't where they want it but that's not the kind of team this is. They're in game, they get after it, it just hasn't went their way.''

Atlanta also fired bench coach Carlos Tosca. Gwinnett pitching coach Marty Reed has joined the club as bullpen coach. Terry Pendleton will move from first base coach to bench coach and Eddie Perez will move from bullpen coach to first base coach.

The Braves went with Snitker over other internal candidates, including Pendleton, and plan to revisit the managing situation in the fall. For now, however, there is the task of trying to find a way out of a funk that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

''I think when you look at our club offensively, we don't have a lot of power,'' Hart said. ''We know what we have. At the same point, this is a club that has some talent, has some ability ... we want to see that when we have a chance to get more wins, we finish it off.''