Braves fire Seitzer and assistant hitting coach. Also Fasano.

Strike3urout said:
Acuna ended his season with 4 HR and a .716 OPS. Let's not forget that he did play 2 full months and looked like a shadow of his MVP self. Ozzie was way below his established level of production. So was Riley. So was Harris. None of the injured guys performed well up until their injuries.

I don't know how much Seitzer is to blame, but it seems clear that this offense needs a breath of fresh air and someone who can teach a smarter approach to hitting. We have a lineup full of guess hitters with only a rough concept of the strike zone. Maybe they are all beyond saving, but it's easier to try a new hitting coach first.
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You mention Riley. He was well on his way to have normal end of year numbers if he didn't get hurt. Yeah the 1st 2 months sucked. But he had WRC+ of 151, 130, and 130 from June to August b4 his season ended. I would have liked to see Acuna get the same chance since he has a huge track record of being awesome.

Sietzer seems to have ****ed himself in that interview and that's good enough reason to be canned I suppose. I just have a hard time believing Seitzer is to blame when he has a track record of having great offenses, our best players have a track record of being great, and our lineup was a giant bandaide most of the year.

That said, I don't put much stuck into hitting coaches. Like a manager they can effect things at the margins but overall it's talent that's going to win you games. And the Braves still have a ton of it. Winning 89 games with the amount of injuries they had was a miracle itself.
 
Sometimes even good coaches fail to resonate with the guys they are teaching. Maybe whatever Seitzer was doing with them got stale, or the guys started tuning him out.

It's a lot easier to get rid of coaches than to rebuild the roster.
 
Seitzer's wife had cancer this season -- that was why he took a month off in the middle of the season. She recovered, thankfully, but it's not hard to imagine how that might affect someone's overall job performance.
 
thewupk said:
You mention Riley. He was well on his way to have normal end of year numbers if he didn't get hurt. Yeah the 1st 2 months sucked. But he had WRC+ of 151, 130, and 130 from June to August b4 his season ended. I would have liked to see Acuna get the same chance since he has a huge track record of being awesome.

Sietzer seems to have ****ed himself in that interview and that's good enough reason to be canned I suppose. I just have a hard time believing Seitzer is to blame when he has a track record of having great offenses, our best players have a track record of being great, and our lineup was a giant bandaide most of the year.

That said, I don't put much stuck into hitting coaches. Like a manager they can effect things at the margins but overall it's talent that's going to win you games. And the Braves still have a ton of it. Winning 89 games with the amount of injuries they had was a miracle itself.
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All of this.
 
MadduxFanII said:
Seitzer's wife had cancer this season -- that was why he took a month off in the middle of the season. She recovered, thankfully, but it's not hard to imagine how that might affect someone's overall job performance.
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AA is cold blooded.

Reminds me of when the Titans fired Heimerdinger while he was fighting cancer. He died two months later:
 
thewupk said:
You mention Riley. He was well on his way to have normal end of year numbers if he didn't get hurt. Yeah the 1st 2 months sucked. But he had WRC+ of 151, 130, and 130 from June to August b4 his season ended. I would have liked to see Acuna get the same chance since he has a huge track record of being awesome.

Sietzer seems to have ****ed himself in that interview and that's good enough reason to be canned I suppose. I just have a hard time believing Seitzer is to blame when he has a track record of having great offenses, our best players have a track record of being great, and our lineup was a giant bandaide most of the year.

That said, I don't put much stuck into hitting coaches. Like a manager they can effect things at the margins but overall it's talent that's going to win you games. And the Braves still have a ton of it. Winning 89 games with the amount of injuries they had was a miracle itself.
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Riley would have needed quite the epic stretch to end the season with his usual numbers: along the lines of 15HR and OPS well over 1.000. Doable, certainly, but I wouldn't bet on it. Similarly for Acuna. And of course I didn't even mention the guys who looked truly lost at the plate: Murphy, Arcia, and Kelenic. Overall, it was a little too much regression from too many players, even with some of it being bad luck.
 
Strike3urout said:
Riley would have needed quite the epic stretch to end the season with his usual numbers: along the lines of 15HR and OPS well over 1.000. Doable, certainly, but I wouldn't bet on it. Similarly for Acuna. And of course I didn't even mention the guys who looked truly lost at the plate: Murphy, Arcia, and Kelenic. Overall, it was a little too much regression from too many players, even with some of it being bad luck.
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Yeah. Riley and Acuna have never played at a 1000+ OPS pace for a given stretch. They have literally been top 3 hitters at their position for the last 3 years prior to this year. But 2 bad months and it's over for them. Won't get to that level of play again. Hitting coach bad.

Not sure why you want to bring up Arcia and Kelenic like they are some known quanity of being good players. Kelenic was a gamble that didn't pay off. He is clearly showing to be a 4th OF type. That's just who he is. Arcia got exposed in the 2nd half of last year. He's just not a good hitter. I suspect Murphy was still nursing an injury when he came back. I'd bet good money he's much better in 2025.
 
CyYoung31 said:
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Chipper is my alltime favorite player. But watching that video again is cringe. Just another case of an old timer not realzing how the modern game works. Also not realizing that not everybody has his talent level. What's easy and seems simplistic to him isn't the case for everyone else.

Also the Braves had a better than league avg Batting Avg and OPS with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs. This is just a case of confirmation bias. I doubt Chipper watches how other teams do it so thinks the Braves are bad when they fail. Some people, and Chipper too apparently, seem to think this should be an automatic run everytime. It was barely above 50% in Chippers day and now has dropped below 50% with the increase in strikeouts so that's no surprise. Pitchers are way better than they were 20-25 years ago.
 
msstate7 said:
Tinkering with Olson's swing after a career year is reason enough. Throw in messing up kelenic after AA sold his firstborn to get him, and I'm fine with it.
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Olson is fine, but there really is no fixing him. He is who he is. He has a long swing and I read an article when Olson was in the midst of his slump that Seitzer said (and I paraphrase): "When Olson's bottom half is messed up, he is going to struggle." That tends to right itself over the length of the season and he was torrid in August and September (OPS > .900 both months). His K-rate was > 25% during the first half and 21% in the second half (16% in September). BA > .300 in September. He's going to be streaky given the nature of his swing. Strikeouts matter less for him because the risk/reward is reasonable, but in the year of a relatively dead ball, putting the ball in play with authority (especially given his EVs) is a plus because the power will come. Whether Seitzer had anything to do--good or bad--vis-a-vis Olson in 2024 remains unknown.

I obviously don't watch every inning up here in Minnesota, but Olson seemed to tighten up his approach in August in September and it paid dividends. He shouldn't become a slap-hitting opposite-field guy because he loses about 3/4 of his value if that's the case. But I think he--like a lot of hitters--has to realize what he can and can't do because when he's on, he's integral to the Braves' success.
 
thewupk said:
Also not realizing that not everybody has his talent level.
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THat's a huge thing that elite atheles miss. Somethings that are natural to them are not natural to others. Ted WIlliams had a similar issue. He didn't get why players couldn't see the ball the same way he did. He was able to read writing on a curveball coming at him.
 
MadduxFanII said:
Seitzer's wife had cancer this season -- that was why he took a month off in the middle of the season. She recovered, thankfully, but it's not hard to imagine how that might affect someone's overall job performance.
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I thought that was Kranitz the pitching coach?
 
thewupk said:
Yeah. Riley and Acuna have never played at a 1000+ OPS pace for a given stretch. They have literally been top 3 hitters at their position for the last 3 years prior to this year. But 2 bad months and it's over for them. Won't get to that level of play again. Hitting coach bad.

Not sure why you want to bring up Arcia and Kelenic like they are some known quanity of being good players. Kelenic was a gamble that didn't pay off. He is clearly showing to be a 4th OF type. That's just who he is. Arcia got exposed in the 2nd half of last year. He's just not a good hitter. I suspect Murphy was still nursing an injury when he came back. I'd bet good money he's much better in 2025.
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You‘re putting words in my mouth. I did say it was feasible that they would have hit a hot streak had they not gotten injured. But I‘m not just assuming it would have happened, certainly not for everyone. Clearly, everyone got a good sample size of play, before they got injured, and they all performed well below their established level.

Arcia and Murphy were All-Stars last season. Even with some regression to the mean, you wouldn‘t expect them to turn into some of the worst hitters in the league. They have track records of being capable hitters at their positions.

Overall, it was too many disappointing seasons without a real surprise to the upside to just continue down the same road. Coupled with the offensive performance of the last 3 playoff series, and I can‘t shake the feeling that this offense has been figured out in a sense.

Seitzer did a good job in his time overall, and I‘m not expecting miracles from his sucessor. But I do feel like a change is needed.
 
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Strike3urout said:
Arcia and Murphy were All-Stars last season.
.
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Arcia has played almost 1000 games, before coming to Atlanta he had a career 72 OPS+ He had a 73 OPS+ last year, to paraphrase, Dennis Green "HE IS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS"

2023 was an anomoly. Not what you expect.
 
I don't like it one bit. It won't fix anything. Chipper's right. Seitzer can't force a group to hit with a team mentality. That's on the guy's in the box. It's not even modern vs. old, its about playing the game to put the team in the best spot to win. That takes hitters being smart enough to recognize that. Honestly, Merrifield was the only guy I saw who even tried to give himself up when called for with any consistency.
 
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