The Braves announced Friday they’ve signed manager Brian Snitker to an extension through the 2025 season. He’d been headed into the final guaranteed year of his contract, which also contained an option for 2024. Atlanta has preemptively triggered that option and tacked on an additional season for the Illinois native.
It’s familiar territory for Snitker, who has signed a handful of short-term extensions since taking over the dugout midway through the 2016 season. An organizational lifer who has spent more than four decades with the franchise, he stepped into almost immediate success as skipper. Snitker won the NL’s Manager of the Year award by his second full season at the helm after overseeing an 18-win improvement between 2017-18.
That 2018 campaign saw the Braves win 90 games and an NL East title. It kicked off a stretch of five years (and counting) atop the division, one which has seen the club play at a 90-plus win pace in four of those seasons (including the shortened 2020 schedule). The lone exception, an 88-73 showing in 2021 that looked like a relative “down” year, was more than salvaged in October. Despite carrying the worst regular season record of any playoff team, Atlanta knocked off the Brewers and Dodgers before winning a six-game World Series over the Astros.
It was the Braves’ first World Series win since 1995. The club rewarded Snitker by exercising a 2023 option on his contract a year early. They didn’t replicate their playoff success last season but had their best regular season showing in nearly two decades. Atlanta won 101 games, topping the triple-digit mark for the first time since 2003. An otherworldly second half was capped off with a late-season sweep of the Mets to all but clinch the division, erasing a deficit that had reached as high as 10 1/2 games at the beginning of June. Unfortunately for Braves’ fans, it was the third-place Phillies who made the deepest playoff run among NL East clubs, with Philadelphia eliminating Atlanta in four games during their Division Series.
While it obviously wasn’t the manner in which the Braves envisioned their season ending, there’s no question of the success they’ve had under Snitker. The club has gone 542-451 in parts of seven seasons with him at the helm, a 54.6% win percentage. Only the Dodgers, Astros and Yankees have a longer active postseason streak than Atlanta. No other club has won its division in five straight years.
The 67-year-old Snitker has certainly had the fortune of working with extremely talented rosters. No manager is exclusively or even primarily responsible for a club’s successes and failures, and the Braves’ strong run is primarily thanks to their core of young stars. Yet Snitker has helped keep the club remarkably consistent over the past half-decade, and the front office is clearly confident in his ability to continue doing so over the next few years.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
That’s great! It’s totally deserved. He’s done an amazing job.
Well deserved. Great manager.
Good to see a lifer such as Snitker finally become a manager, and also enjoy success. Congrats to the second-best manager in the NL East, after Rob Thomson…of course. ; ) Another low-key baseball lifer that finally got the opportunity.
Really? That’s an odd assumption
CarverAndrews;
What’s interesting is that while everyone appreciates Snicker today as a baseball lifer, Braves fans complained about him for his first couple of years (especially when he disciplined young star players). They wanted an “name” Manager or something.
We see the same scenario playing out in Anaheim today. Angels fans think Phil Nevin is poisoning the team. Mike Trout likes him. Most of the veteran players do. Terry Francona – the best manager in MLB – has been friends with him for decades and respects him as a manager. And in the ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’ category the Angels GM that hired Nevin – Perry Minasian – was poached from the Braves.
@Samuel – As fans, our opinions on players are misguided enough. Managers, coaches and front office types? We haven’t a clue most of the time, at least until the track record is long enough and the exposure is such that we can see beyond the surface.
Baseball managers are mostly judged by their visible game day moves, when their most important job by far is herding cats in that clubhouse and figuring out how to navigate all of the minefields while keeping the players relatively happy and informed and playing at their best with the fewest distractions possible. Snitker seems to have that fits, as does Thomson. Old school, humble and grounded, and completely authentic human beings. What a shock that they managed to get hired!
Agreed. Snit is perfect. How quickly some forget how bad Freddy G was.
Definitely, and yet we still see and hear Braves fans complaining about Snit…
Some people are just never happy nor satisfied..
Any chance they change the name of the team from Braves to the scaredy-cats?
Nope
What exactly does a scaredy cat have to do with extending Snitker? You’re saying they extended him because they were afraid?
This guy is obviously a clown
How much have you smoked today?
Obviously not enough to pass out, which would be an improvement.
You couldn’t smoke enough to erase this kind of stupid…. people who think people who smoke are stupid are under the same misconception that any racist or homophobic person is under just because they don’t like it…
Did I miss something? Leave the Chiefs and Braves alone, we already sacrificed the Indians and Redskins to the gods
Yea and what they changed their team names and logos to sucks. They really could have done something cool but instead we get generic. Guardians seems like an Angels rip off to me and the Commanders logo is one of the weakest in appeal in sports.
Braves have their new Bobby Cox, I mean he’s good enough to manage until he says he wants to retire. Good on them for recognizing a great manager.
Good Ole bobbing Bobby Cox
Leo Mazzone was the one bobbing in the dugout
Rocking Leo!
Also good on AA for going with Snit when he came in. Usually new GMs like to bring in their own manager to take over.
Ahhhh getting trolled already by northeast teams fans, glorious! 2nd best manager in the Division???? They had a great second half and went on a run heading into the playoffs. If St Louis would have removed they’re closer who couldn’t throw strikes in the game 1 it might have been a different outcome. But that’s baseball. Anyway, Snit deserves everything he gets because he has earned it every step of the way. Let’s go Bravos!!!!!
The Braves do it right. Get a great skipper in there and leave him! Don’t pull the rug out after 3-4 years for whatever dumb reason. He is the right guy for this franchise. Good on them to lock him up.
Good. Its well deserved. He has been a great manager. Snit deserves to know he will be there a couple years at least.
Who haven’t they extended besides Fried? It seems everyone is under control for at least 2 or 3 more years.
Fried is the only remaining un-extended core player. They have him through 2024, I believe.
All key position players are under long term control. But only a few of the pitching staff are – Strider, Wright, Lee and Iglesias.
Didn’t realize he’s been managing the Braves since ’16. Time flies. Congrats to him.
Much deserved
I don’t if the Braves have done so much but yet so little this off season or they just have not done much at all. I like the Murphy trade, but otherwise the team regressed.
Snickers gonna go from the bench straight to the nursing home
I think the Braves are banking on the fact they won 101 games with multiple key contributors having very down seasons.
Acuna, Albies, Duvall, Ozuna, Rosario, Morton, Anderson, Soroka, and to some extent Olson.
The fact they won 101 with all those guys having down seasons compared to prognosticators will tell you they should improve if those guys come back a little bit, though if you do adhere to that you have to think Riley, Harris, Strider, Wright, and Grissom possibly regress to expectations as well. Realistically, they didn’t have a whole lot of room for improvement. Sure, they could have gone after some of the top free agents maybe, but they used that money to lock up their core instead (for the most part). If you don’t look at the extensions signed this year as ‘doing something’ this year, then you have to look at the past ones almost like free agent deals .. so .. yeah .. those were big gets for the current team as a whole.
I am not going to say they win 101, but I seriously doubt they will fall off much and it’s very conceivable they improve. Winning more than 101 is hard for ANY team.
This is the case for many teams UGA Steve. Not unique to the Braves. And you are correct – if you adjust expectations on the under performers you have to also adjust for the over achievers. In the end, the Braves are a fantastic team for years to come.
I well thought that 2023 was going to be his year managing and the Atlanta Braves were going to get Joe Maddon to replace him.
That would be Maddoning and cause a lot more than just Snitkers from the back of the room. It would be extremely unlogistical.
Picture accompanying the story looks like he’s making a speech in front of a washing machine.
Take that Florida! Get jealous, you dirty geriatrics.
UGA Steve spitting knowledge and truth!!!! Most logical spot on post in Braves threads in a minute. So many folks talking about the lack of FA signings, Swanson walking, and on and on. AA’s job is to put a TEAM consisting of numerous players, not just the “Major” splash. Murphy trade was they’re splash.
Snit was my A ball manager in 1982
Anderson Braves -Sally league
What a career for him
Congrats