Leading OFF
Braves never gave up, and now they’re champions
HOUSTON – In a baseball universe increasingly given over to the young, where managerial experience is no longer a prerequisite to run a dugout, the World Series champions are led by a 66-year-old organizational lifer, who was filling out lineup cards in remote depots of the Deep South four decades ago.
In a competitive landscape where win curves and playoff expectancy rule all, the best team in baseball couldn’t crack .500 by the All-Star break, lost its greatest player to injury – and then tripled down, wheeling and dealing for an entirely new set of outfielders.
And in a postseason in which they had to get through the market-defying Milwaukee Brewers, the big bucks and bigger brains of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the still-formidable, industry-disrupting Houston Astros, the champions of Major League Baseball reigned thanks to the decisions of a twice-recycled general manager who eschews corporate speak and a top-to-bottom organizational mindset that values every voice.
Yes, these Atlanta Braves don’t look or sound or transact like so many of the 29 other franchises in the major leagues. And as they put the finishing touches on a 7-0 victory over the Astros in Game 6 of the World Series on Nov. 2, nailing down their first championship since 1995, that’s something for which many baseball fans can be grateful.
None more so than their millions of supporters in greater Atlanta, who have waited not so patiently for a winner – any winner – since Tom Glavine and David Justice teamed up to beat Cleveland 1-0 in the 1995 Series, two stadiums and a different millennium ago.
Hard to believe, but Brian Snitker was both a Brave and in the house at FultonCounty Stadium that night. He spent ’95 as a roving minor league instructor, 13 years after he first filled out a lineup card for the 1982 Anderson (South Carolina) Braves, in low A-ball.
As night turned to morning at Minute Maid Park, Snitker, in his 47th year in the organization but just his sixth at the helm of the big-league club, had a special gift on its way.
“I’m going to give it to Brian,” first baseman and franchise anchor Freddie Freeman said of the baseball he cradled for the final out of Game 6, then tucked it in his back pocket, safe from the celebratory fray. “He means so much to this organization. He’s put on every hat there is.”
Snitker added another one – 2021 World Series champions, and there’s no asterisks for how hard it was nor how doubtful it looked for so much of the summer.
No, we won’t be confusing these Braves with the 1927 Yankees or the ’98 Yankees or even the 2018 Red Sox. They won just 88 games, and only the 2006 Cardinals (83), 2000 Yankees (87) and 1987 Twins (85) won fewer games and a World Series title over a full season in the divisional era.
Yet this is four consecutive National League East titles for the Braves, proof that their organizational foundation and individual fortitude renders their relatively light win total an aberration.
Lest we forget, this season began with ace Mike Soroka reinjuring his Achilles’ and missing the season, a big reason the Braves were 41-44 and in fourth place on July 6.
It ended with veteran pitching horse Charlie Morton breaking his fibula in Game 1 of the World Series.
And in the middle of this manure sandwich was the great Ronald Acuña Jr. suffering a torn ACL in July.
So many franchises might have cashed it in.
But general manager Alex Anthopoulos is not wired that way, nor is the organization.
“Alex went ahead and said ‘No, we’re not sellers, we’re buyers,’ ” reliever Tyler Matzek said after finishing a dominant postseason with a two-inning, fourstrikeout performance. “And he bought the right people, that’s for damn sure.”
One of them, outfielder Jorge Soler, seized the World Series MVP trophy in Game 6, clubbing a baseball 466 feet and over the Minute Maid Park train tracks – his third go-ahead home run of the Series. Another, Adam Duvall, slugged a Game 5 grand slam. Joc Pederson carried them past Milwaukee in the NL division series.
While the Braves are quietly proud of their work in the analytics space, another department seems just as crucial – human resources.
“It is knowing the people in your organization understand what it is we want to accomplish, what the prize is, what the purpose is – and that is to build a championship team, with players who have championship hearts,” says Hall of Fame GM John Schuerholz, architect of the Braves’ dynasty of the 1990s and their last championship club.
“Alex did that and now we find ourselves World Series champions.”
Yet to give credit to yet another rockstar GM would be to miss the point of these Braves.
Certainly, they have star power, from Freeman to Acuña to emerging slugger Austin Riley. Yet after Morton went down, the group was carried by a pitching staff that tasted failure far too recently.
Matzek remains one of the game’s great reclamation stories. Yet in this World Series, with the staff terribly compromised, it was A.J. Minter and Luke Jackson, Kyle Wright and Chris Martin all consuming crucial outs and holding the group together.
All shared another trait: Veteran pitchers forced to swallow their pride and spend time at nearby Class AAA Gwinnett this season.
It was a true test of a pitcher’s resolve and the organization’s brainpower. Minter, for one, says he would not be here without Class AAA pitching coach Mike Maroth keeping his head right.
“Everyone should experience failure,” says Minter, who finished with 18 strikeouts in 12 postseason innings and pitched in six of the Braves’ 11 victories. “That’s what makes you who you are. What (Maroth) did for me, over two years, personally, goes unmatched.”
Erstwhile set-up man Chris Martin felt that pain, too. He found himself sliding way down the bullpen pecking order, as Matzek and Minter and others rose. Martin was off the NLDS roster, forced to tinker with arm and mind at Gwinnett.
Come World Series time, he was on the roster, pressed into absorbing a crucial inning in a 3-2, Game 4 win in which opener Dylan Lee recorded just one out. He added another 1 scoreless innings to help Atlanta crawl back into Game 5 – just 2 innings that won’t make the championship highlight DVD but are part of the connective tissue that makes a champion.
“They never give up on you. You can go through some struggles, but they keep throwing you out there and keep giving you confidence to do your job.
“I didn’t have the year that I wanted.
But a lot of people stepped in and took on that role and did a great job.”
And all that comes back to the man in the dugout.
Snitker acknowledged that he saw parts of his career flashing before him during Game 6 – how could he not? – and that the entire evening felt “surreal.”
There is nothing Ivy League about Snitker, who has possibly never heard the term “life coach” or “wellness expert.”
Yet he’s no rube, either, and the players know this and appreciate that the franchise looks beyond the surface.
“In an era when teams are signing new managers that are doing analytics and all this stuff,” says Matzek, “for a team to stick with a guy like Snit who brings a little bit of both – a little old school and new school – it’s a great blend of what today’s baseball is and old-school baseball. He’s been the rock in our locker room. That calmness, that never-wavering attitude – it starts with him.”
Snitker thought, too, about those who didn’t make it – lifers in other organizations who never made it off the buses, out of the complex, onto a charter flight.
His was a narrow path, but he survived, developing qualities he’d eventually pass on to his greatest ballclub.
“You just keep fighting the fight and grinding through because you never know what could happen,” Snitker said as Wednesday morning grew later. “It happened to me. I got an opportunity.
“There’s a lot of guys out there, my same type thing who have been through a lot and put their families through a lot, and not everybody gets it. I was blessed enough to get an opportunity.”
The Braves chose him in the 25th round way back in 1976, and eventually the great Hank Aaron himself extended Snitker a job when he batted just .254 over four minor league seasons.
The Hammer saw the right qualities in Snitker, and Schuerholz sees it, too, likening Snitker’s relationships with his coaches and the front office staff members with his own partnership with manager Bobby Cox.
“His players see that,” says Schuerholz, “they feel it and they feel very comfortable with him as their manager because they know they can trust him. He’s been here 45 years. That’s a trustworthy man.
“And tonight, he proved that he’s a darn good manager that can win championships.”
Thanks in large part to an organization that never loses sight of that goal.
something to prove. He was one of the best pitchers in baseball, yielding a 1.74 ERA after the All-Star Game, but he was brutal in his last two postseason starts, surrendering a 10.24 ERA.
He was so anxious to get back on the mound that he asked Kranitz if he could pitch on three days’ rest in Game 5. He offered to pitch out of the bullpen. Anything to help out, trying to flush the ugly outings from his system.
Fried’s teammates, knowing how much this was eating at his soul, reached out to help.
Freeman sent him a text message in the morning, telling him that he still had everyone’s confidence.
“He sent me a really, really awesome text message that was just a big boost of encouragement, just saying that he believed in me and that he knew that I could get this done,” Fried said. “To be able just to have that support from someone like that, it made my confidence go up.”
Just before Fried left the dugout and walked to the mound, Kranitz put his hands on his shoulders and stopped him.
“Max, just be who you are, man,” Kranitz said. “Just be who you are. It’s good enough. Just let your natural ability take over, and that’s exactly what he did.”
Fried, with high school teammates Jack Flaherty of the St. Louis Cardinals and Lucas Giolito of the Chicago White Sox watching from a suite, never gave the Astros a chance. He was virtually unhittable. They were sitting on fastballs, and Fried was firing changeups. They were looking for sliders and he was throwing sinkers.
“When Max started throwing those changeups, I started pacing like crazy,” Kranitz said. “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe he’s throwing that changeup here. But he knew exactly what he was doing.
“When he got locked in like that, it was some of the best pitches I’ve ever seen a young man throw.”
Who knew that being spiked would
totally enrage Fried, kicking in a ferocity that made him nearly untouchable?
“Honestly, I thought it was his trigger to get going,” reliever Tyler Matzek said. “He got a little pissed off and started dominating after that point. Obviously, we’re holding our breath when he got up, but I think that pissed him off a little bit.
“The guy was unbelievable. He never wavered. That’s the Max Fried I know. That’s the Max Fried the world should know.”
Then again, if he wasn’t spiked, perhaps it would have made no difference. His demeanor was unlike anything his teammates had seen all season.
He was intense, focused, with a conviction, d’Arnaud said, seeing it from his first warmup pitch in the bullpen to his final pitch of the game.
“He wanted to show the world basically who he is,” d’Arnaud said. “He was like, ‘I’m going to get it. I want the ball. I want the ball. I want the ball.’ ”
Said closer Will Smith: “Max had this look about him all day that he was not going to be denied. He wasn’t going to back down from anybody. He was going to leave it all out on the field. And he did exactly that.
“He’s a bad dude.”
Fried, almost in a daze afterward, walked around the field, repeating himself, still trying to grasp the idea that he was a World Series champion.
“It’s indescribable,” he said. “It’s something you dream about as a kid. Something you always want to happen and you dream about, and to be able to kind of have this moment, it’s really special.
“Pretty awesome.”
It was a night that forever will be cherished in Atlanta history.
“I’m still numb, but what Max Fried did today was unbelievable,” Freeman said. “We needed him to be Max Fried. He was just incredible.
“We’re World Series champions, and Max is the reason why.”