The Braves have fired three coaches who were previously under contract through 2025, with David O’Brien of The Athletic among those to relay the news (X links here). The three coaches are hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes and catching coach Sal Fasano. Atlanta will fill the two hitting coach positions but won’t replace Fasano, who was in a role specifically created for him. General manager Alex Anthopoulos had previously said he expected the entire coaching staff to return but O’Brien reports that the club hadn’t yet begun its evaluation process at that time.
Atlanta undoubtedly had a disappointing year, including on offense. The club came into the season with championship aspirations but just barely snuck into the playoffs and then were quickly eliminated. The club’s hitters posted a collective line of .243/.309/.415, leading to a league-average wRC+ of 100. That was a big drop from last year when Atlanta collectively hit .276/.344/.501 for a league-leading 125 wRC+.
How much credit or blame the hitting coach deserves for such a swing is a matter of debate. Seitzer has been the club’s hitting coach since October of 2014 and overseen plenty of good clubs since then, as Atlanta has the playoffs in each of the last seven years and won the 2021 World Series. While the 2024 club didn’t meet expectations, injuries undoubtedly played a role there, with Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy and others missing significant time. Regardless, the club has decided that a change is necessary, so they will be looking for a new hitting coach for the first time in a decade.
Seitzer played in the majors from 1986 to 1997, suiting up for Kansas City, Milwaukee, Oakland and Cleveland. The Diamondbacks hired him as their hitting coach going into the 2007 season and he later had the same job with the Royals and Blue Jays before coming to Atlanta. Magallanes was a minor leaguer in the ’90s but never made it to the show. He became a minor league coach early in this century and was able to get up to the majors with Atlanta for the 2021 season.
Fasano played in the bigs from 1996 to 2008, playing for nine different teams. He quickly began coaching in the minors, getting hired by the Blue Jays in late 2009, around the same time Anthopoulos became the GM of that club. In late 2017, Anthopoulos became GM in Atlanta and Fasano was hired by the club as a catching instructor that same month.
Thank God
Kevin will be back. Threepeat
Should have cleaned house entirely.
Confident ATL will be back dominating NL east next year.
I really don’t like the word “fired”,; I’d give them the option to be reassign to “locker room attendant”. This would at least give them a choice.
I see the kids got home from school today.
Things were going good in the comment section earlier.
Wow I remember having Kevin Seitzer rookie cards up the wazoo but none of them looked like the picture of Seitzer MLBTR put up for this article.
lol i know right I had to look it up to see if it really was the same guy
What took them so long?
Wild card team beat the top seeded team again in nl playoffs. Womp Philly
Come on Mariners hire seitzer!
Pirates plz get Seitzer
@ hilly. No. We have Edgar
Not full time I bet…
I don’t see the hate for Seitzer. In 2023 they set a major league record for slugging percentage. He can’t help all the injuries this season, and he can’t help that the majority of the players that Atlanta has acquired has a lot of swing and miss in their game.
From my understanding his philosophy has always been about making hard contact up the middle and towards the opposite field gap. There has been a lot of praise for his approach in the past.
I’ve also saw data that showed that Atlanta has more hard hit outs than anyone else in baseball while their percentages of hard hits, flat balls, line drives, and ground outs were all comparable to 2023 when they had a record setting year. That points mainly to bad luck or significantly better defensive positioning by the other teams.
So what has happened behind the scenes?
What has happened since Snitker said that everyone would be returning?
He’s taking the fall.
To be honest, it has always been easy for someone to take the fall so it makes it look like the team is being proactive. That may very well be the case here.
I believe that if Seitzer wants to continue to coach that he will NOT be long without a job.
The angry mob must be appeased.
Well stated southi. Great question to end your thoughtful post.
Sometimes when a coach is fired it isn’t necessarily about the fired coach. Could be the Braves have a young ( cheap) hitting coach in their system that they would like to hold on to. Seitzer is 62 so maybe the Braves are looking for someone for the long term. Of course watch the Braves go out and hire Rod Carew totally destroying my theory
Enter Chipper??
Chipper isn’t interested.
Make him an offer he can’t refuse, in the form of a challenge.
Braves lifer and fan who can’t stand watching “swat and strand” offense.
He doesn’t want it.
GM is in cover his backside mode.
Seitzer was a great hitter when he played for the KC Royals. I’d love to see them bring him back.
It’s a fickle business just last year he was the best hitting coach in baseball with a record setting offense and now he’s looking in the help wanted section of mlbtraderumors.
But it’s the players and their attitudes more than anything you can lead a horse to water but that horse will still hack away with runners on 2nd and 3rd and less than 2 out with wiff because “chicks dig the long ball” and meanwhile those hens on 2nd 3rd never come “Home” to Roost and nobody is feeling “Chipper” about that.
I’m beginning to wonder if there will be anything but first year hitting coaches in MLB next year.
Its time to play Match the Fired Hitting Coach with the Team with a Hitting Coach Vacancy. They will all end up looking better to another team and get rehired!
Hitting Coaches TM
Taking the fall for the offense since time immemorial.
Something that should have been done three months ago
Employees not fired with enthusiasm soon will be.
Beatings will continue until morale improves!
Wondering if Contreras’ improvement after leaving Atlanta contributed to Fasano’s firing. That trade and the Adam Wainwright/J.D. Drew trade are the two trades I most regret them making.
Braves wanted to win at the time and had enough pitching depth, just not the offense. David justice /grissom to Cleveland for Kenny lofton and Alan embree was bad too except for embree.
At the time, Wainwright had a big growth spurt and lost his release point. The Braves downgraded their estimate of him, making him trade bait. The Braves had plenty of offense. Trading Wainwright for one year of Drew was shortsighted.
Contreras hasn’t improved that much. He was pretty good with the Braves. He was actually better offensively with the Braves. He should have never been traded.
His defense is much better. I agree about the offense, and that he shouldn’t have been traded.
That would be really odd since his OPS has gone down just a bit since his last year in Atlanta.
He was a platoon/part time player in Atlanta.
Cards need a hitting coach…
So he was a good hitting coach when they won the World Series and now he is a bad hitting coach?
Andy Haines is looking for a job
You can fire Sal, but you can never fire his mustache.
No but you can shave it
MLB causing a lot of hitting coaches there jobs this year putting that dead ball back in this year
I would so hate to be a coach right now.
Sometimes a team needs a new voice in coaching. Sure the Braves had someone lined up already or they won’t have moved on from them.
Chipper Jones in like August of 2024 really attacked the way the Braves were hitting. The Braves really failed at the basics, with things like getting a runner in from 3rd; 2 strike approaches, etc.
Shitker should go as well so we can get rid of all the bobby cox cronies.. Go get david ross and start from there.
Yep Snitker the old turtle should retire. He is overrated and over matched
If team would go back to hitting line drives and quit swinging for the fences the homers would come. Go back to old school: see ball hit ball run like hell. Batters should be fined by the team every time they take more than one shot at the fence per at bat. Braves have had to many strikeouts verses the number of homers just because of launch angle GO BACK TO BASICS: SINGLES, BUNTS, LINE DRIVES BEAT US THIS YEAR!!!!!!
“Every time I see you hit one in the air, you owe me twenty pushups.”
-Lou Brown
I thought the Reds should have used that with Billy Hamilton.
That’s who I think of every time I watch that scene.
Fire Snitker. If there was a WAR for managers his would be negative
great at developing players but his in-game management is atrocious
I prefer starting an inning with a fresh reliever, not bringing in the reliever from the previous inning and hoping that he still pitches well.
yea i dont get it. hes so relaxed in regular season but when it comes to post-season he destroys the BP
He basically just sits there you may as well get a statue. Anytime an ump makes a bad call he does nothing and he even has challenges to challenge the bad call and he will still just sit there.
Maybe it’s like a Weekend at Bernie’s situation and Snitker died years ago and the team is just carrying the corpse around just not in a hilarious way like Weekend at Bernie’s.
Snitker is overrated just like Bobby Cox was. But the Braves will stupidly stay with him until he retires.
I would have been a very interested fly if I had been on the wall when this decision was made
This is dumb, put you can’t fire the players.
fans come to see the players not the coaches
Chipper jones come on down
I like Seitzer, he was great for a few years, but this year it felt like our offense had no plan of attack and all the other teams had a book on how to pitch to our hitters and we never adjusted. Was it 100% his fault? I don’t have an answer for it, but I think he could have done better this year and he didn’t
The Braves hitting philosophy from the minors to the majors is flawed. None of the teams hit worth a crap this season. I am friends with a couple of the Braves minor leaguers and they both told me it is an organization wide problem. They need to rethink their approach and not stress home runs over high on base percentage and intelligent base running.
Not a fan of this whatsoever. Seitzer has led the offense through some great years and just because of one down year he gets fired. Going to be hard to replace him, maybe Chipper could but is he really going to join the coaching staff? And why fire Fasano? Year marred with injuries and players rarely getting a chance to settle in to a certain position. This was just one of those years you write off, while also calling it a success considering the circumstances.
Very telling comment by Seitzer in his interview w/DOB at the Athletic: “It was the hardest season of my life, because guys were trying so hard and couldn’t get going, and I couldn’t get them to (not press),” Seitzer said. “if they can find somebody to get these guys to not try so hard, that needs to be the guy that they hire. You can talk about mechanics until the cows come home, but this (struggles this season) was all between the ears.” Seitzer also noted that he missed time w/the organization due to health problems his wife dealt with. Class guy. Doesn’t blame the Braves, mentions he’s extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to be w/the organization for the last 10 years.
Anyone who has played serious competitive baseball will tell you that no matter how good your mechanics have been, when you are pressing they stink.
The braves obviously have a lot of very competitive guys. The injuries started early and nobody got in sync at the same time. Guys tried their hardest to carry the team, and they pressed.
It was only towards the end that they started improving together
I believe Kranitz also missed a good bit of time for his wife, as well. It’s telling that he wasn’t getting through to them. 10 years is longer than most hitting coaches — longer than even Snit has been ATL manager — I don’t see why this is such a shock. It’s great that he helped them attain the numbers of 2023, but the talent is still there, they just need a healthier year and hopefully someone that can get through to them, and possibly alter their hitting philosophy. I really wish they can find/develop more placesetters, which seemed to also be the death of the mighty PHI offense in the playoffs. When big bats go cold and only an occasional solo HR or relying on 3B Vientos to bobble for a run, time to rub Jobu.
White Sox should jump on this. They haven’t had a good hitting coach in years.
As a Braves fan, everything has been said already. However, I remember Seitzer missing extended time in the summer to deal with family matters. This past year has been a whirlwind watching the Braves, and I honestly don’t remember how long he was out. But being away from the team and dealing with personal stuff had to have weighed on the poor guy.
ajc.com/sports/atlanta-braves/braves-are-without-t…
It was colon cancer in his wife. He told DOB. It’s on the paysite.
Rays need to get rid of Mottola and take a flyer on Seitzer. Fasano is a great guy and would do a good job getting some defensive value from a big bat/no glove catcher that they desperately need to sign. Maybe they can do a package deal and trade Mottola/Snyder for Seitzer/Fasano/Max Fried.
Why is it always the hitting coaches fault. That is the 6th or 7th one fired this offseason already and I doubt half those team’s current hitters are much better next season.
Hitting coaches are more expendable.
Fasano was a nice guy. He signed m y Royals hat when I was at a White Sox/Royals game as a little kid. He is well liked and will land on his feet.
Should have been the entire coaching staff especially Shitner
Cards should grab him
Suppose Acuna would have had 5.0 WAR this year then Atlanta would have won 94 and that’s post-season guaranteed. There the problem pinpointed, why would you go shuffling something when it’s no even an issue?
Look at what they ranked in sac flies, sac hits and w/ RISP. Seitzer was the longest-tenured MLB hitting coach — why isn’t reasonable to want a new voice? Even with Acuna, that 2024 wouldn’t have lasted long in the playoffs with an inconsistent and untimely offense that went stagnant for long periods, couldn’t bring in runners or manufacture runs. LAD is hitting .288 w/ RISP during the playoffs. During the season, ATL hit .247 (20th) w/ RISP.