Fredi Gonzalez is on the hot seat with the Atlanta Braves, as the team is reportedly considering firing the manager.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today has reported that the Braves are “embarrassed” over their MLB worst 7-19 start to the season. In this, they are giving some serious thought to replacing Gonzalez.
Nightengale also reported that the team is interested in former San Diego Padres skipper Bud Black, who has experience with two members of the Braves’ front office, John Hart and John Schuerholz.
“Black spent four years in the Cleveland Indians’ front-office working for John Hart, who now is the Braves’ president of baseball operations,”Nightengale reported. “He also pitched seven years in Kansas City while John Schuerholz was the Royals GM. Schuerholz, the Braves’ senior advisor, has spent 25 years in their organization as their GM, and then president.”
There are a few ways to look at this. One is that Black was a good manager with the Padres. His 649-713 record may not reflect it, but his entire managerial career has been spent in a division dominated by the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers.
Black was nearly hired by the Washington Nationals this past winter, so he’s clearly highly thought of in baseball circles.
Additionally, it’s hard to make a strong argument against firing Gonzalez. Any argument in his defense would likely start with his solid 432-404 overall record with the Braves, but he’s 153-197 since the beginning of the 2014 season.
That recent record looks even worse when we consider that Atlanta started the 2015 season 42-42 and finished 67-95. They’re simply not headed in the right direction.
The desire to fire Gonzalez is not puzzling. The timing is. The Braves had one of the worst records in baseball last season and traded their best pitcher (Shelby Miller) and one of their best position players in shortstop Andrelton Simmons.
A 7-19 record is terrible but given the circumstances, it’s far from unpredictable.
Additionally, if Black was their goal, he was fired by the Padres in June of 2015. The Braves could have fired Gonzalez any time after that and hired Black.
While the move might be right, nothing about the timing makes any sense. If Gonzalez was going to be fired, it should have been for his dismal 2014 and 2015 seasons, not an embarrassing 26-game stretch for a rebuilding team.