No vote of confidence for Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker?

On Friday, the AJC released an article interviewing Braves GM John Coppolella. With manager Brian Snitker not under contract beyond 2017, there was a couple of interesting bits in the Q&A.

The Atlanta Braves have several veteran players on one-year deals this season, but one of them is manager Brian Snitker.

Due to player input – insistence, perhaps – Snitker was stripped of the ‘Interim’ title during the past off-season and given the chair at the head table, though Atlanta chose to pass on several other viable candidates in the process.

As things stand, there’s no change in Snitker’s status for 2018. He remains a ‘lame duck’ manager.

On the field, injuries have played a part in the Braves’ results so far, personnel problems have played a part, and certainly pitching issues have likewise been front-and-center for reasons that this team is mired well behind the Nationals, 6 games below .500.

That’s the backdrop for why Coppy’s answer to this question from AJC reporter Mark Bradley seems… evasive.

"You put a lot of thought into alternatives before keeping Brian Snitker as manager. You talked to Ron Washington, whom you liked enough to hire as third-base coach, and Bud Black, who’s probably going to be the National League manager of the year with Colorado. Are you satisfied with what you’ve gotten from Snitker?Brian does a great job. He’s really good with players. There’s a lot of positive things Brian’s done."

Okay… he’s good up to that point… except that Coppolella wasn’t done talking.

"In an interview, you don’t want to point out negatives about anyone who works for you. I could point out negatives about my wife, and she’s perfect in my eyes. It’s the same thing. If you asked Snit, he could point out negatives about me. If you asked me about me, I think there’s negatives.There’s negatives associated with everybody, but also a lot of positives. I don’t want to get into that kind of stuff. We’re in the middle of a draft right now. I’m not thinking about it. Our players and staff are fighting every day. Let’s see how the year goes."

Wow. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Reading between the lines, one would think that Coppy has several issues that he is concerned with and get caught off-guard with the question while also trying not to lie in the answer.

So he deflected… while managing to use the word “negatives” five times in a single response.

If you’re scoring at home, that final is Negatives 5, Positives 2.

Did You Notice the Rest?

Note also that Bradley didn’t even ask for an endorsement of Snit. He simply asked “are you satisfied?”

The easy way out of that question would have been “yeah, we are” or stop after the third sentence and allow the “Brian goes a great job” part to stand on its own.

Such an answer would not have raised any questions… even if the Braves eventually opt to go in different direction at year’s end. But Coppy went a lot further and took a curiously circuitous route to get there in a manner that sounded… nervous.

More from Tomahawk Take

But look at the rest of the interview, too: many of the other answers were much more direct and to the point, with fuller explanations thereafter that supported the initial point.

On Swanson: thoughts of sending him down? “None”
On Colon: “We’re going to get Bartolo off the DL and see what happens.”
On Callups, specifically Newcomb or Sims: “We want to err on the side of caution”

This one – quite different. It was as if he gave the boilerplate answer (“great job”), but then did a ‘180’ to walk it back almost immediately.

Does that answer on Snitker sound like an endorsement for somebody who’s gonna see a contract extension any time soon?

Next: Would you like a Matt finish with that?

We don’t get to see the conversations that occur behind the scenes that might have influenced this response from Coppy. He might very well end up extending Snitker for 2018 when it’s all said and done. But if I’m hedging my bets right now, my money is moving to Ron Washington.

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