Back on Friday, Alex Anthopoulos spoke with the media and I got the chance to ask him a couple of questions, which you can check out at this link. I also promised that I’d have some thoughts from Walt Weiss coming as well, since he spoke with the media right after AA got done talking. Here’s that article now, as it was a pretty good chance to hear from the new manager of the Atlanta Braves as things begin to kick off for spring training and the year beyond.
I asked Weiss about the general feeling
of the clubhouse heading into the spring training and as you would expect, optimism is in the air. “Yeah, there’s a lot of excitement,” responded Weiss to my question. “I know there’s excitement everywhere a this time of year but we got a whole new coaching staff and it’s a really good staff. There’s a great combination of youth on the staff but experienced as well. They’re all very experienced even though they’re relatively young.”
Weiss went on to bring up his relationship with the General Manager and how they’ve been trying to walk the fine line between on-field experience and analytics. “I think we’ve always done a real good job here, from Alex and his team on down,” said Weiss. “[We’re always trying to] find the sweet spot between the information that’s available to us now and the tech that’s to us now and combining that with the wisdom that comes from being in uniform for a long period of time. I think the coaching staff is representative of that and it’s a great feeling.”
The new manager concluded his thoughts by continuing to talk about how excited he was about being able to lead this team heading into the upcoming season.“ I’m excited for this year and I’m excited to go to battle with this group of guys,” exclaimed Weiss. “It’s a talented group, they show up well every day, they compete well, they work well. They prepare well. So that makes my life a little easier. A lot of good vibes right now.“
The press also asked Weiss about his feelings on the state of the pitching staff — particularly when it comes to health. At the time of this presser, the Braves had only lost Spencer Schwellenbach from the rotation due to injury. Now, Hurston Waldrep is set to miss some time due to having “loose bodies” in his pitching elbow, so the injury bug has wasted absolutely no time making its presence felt in camp so far. Weiss remained upbeat — on Friday, at least.
“I think every team in the league has their fingers crossed for their pitching health,” said Weiss. “[Spencer] Strider, [Reynaldo] López, both guys are in a really good place as we sit here today. Strider looks great, López has no restrictions so they’re full steam ahead. That’s a good thing.” It’s certainly encouraging to hear that those two are progressing nicely and should hopefully be able to continue focusing on improving instead of recovering.
With that being said, Weiss has also kept his mind open when it comes to the internal options in the squad taking advantage of any chances that may arise for them to make the starting rotation. “Like I said, everyone deals with this stuff and it usually creates some kind of opportunity for somebody else,” stated Weiss. “We don’t know what injury is going to lead to an opportunity for somebody else. They might step up and do something and they weren’t even on your radar. We had that with Schwellenbach when he came to us at the big league level. He wasn’t even in camp that year. You just never know what’s going to come of these things but I’m sure everyone’s got their fingers crossed on the pitching health.”
We did get an update about how star outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. felt coming into spring training. there’s good news on that front, as Acuña appears to be ready and champing at the bit to get out there and compete. “I asked Ronald that same question when I first saw him when he showed up here. I asked him how he was feeling and he said ‘Amazing,’ and he looks great,” exclaimed Weiss. “That’s really exciting. I feel like Ronald’s one of the best talents in the game and [when] we have him healthy performing like he always does when he’s healthy, that really moves the needle for us. I’m really excited about the way he showed up. He’s running around the outfield really well. He looks like Ronald.”
We also got to hear from Weiss about how he feels like this stint will be different from the rocky road that he experienced as the manager of the Colorado Rockies from 2013 through the 2016 season. “I learned a lot in Colorado. The two situations are worlds apart,” explained Weiss. When I got that job in Colorado, I’d been coaching high school football for four years. I remember my first day of spring training looking at my bench coach and going like ‘Where do I go?’ It was a lot of learning on the fly but I learned so much in those four years. The record wasn’t very good but at the same time, I felt good about the changes we made culturally over there in those four years and I feel good about that. But yeah, a lot of lessons learned.”
“I was going into that one kind of blind,” continued Weiss. “This one is very different. I’ve been here for eight years, I know the core of this team very well, I know Alex very well and his team so this time, I could come to spring training and really hit the ground running.”
Even after a couple of rough seasons relative to expectations, the situation here in Atlanta is certainly a lot better than the one Weiss walked into in Denver. Obviously, the hope is that the new manager will be able to pick up where the old manager left off when it comes to hitting the ground running and making this a successful season for the Braves. While every team has reason to be optimistic around this time of year, the Braves are one of those teams that can realistically act upon that optimism and we’ll see if Weiss’s debut season as Braves manager will be one to remember or not.
