Braves fan here... Thoughts on Fredi Gonzalez?

The players all seemed to like him well enough, with the only notable public spat being the Hanley Ramirez lolly-gagging incident earlier this year (at least that I can recall). He keeps things from getting too ridiculous in the clubhouse, but does seem to enjoy his job.

He uses defensive replacements in late-game situations more than your average manager, and tends to run a rather traditional lineup. As for personnel preferences, well, he allowed Emilio Bonifacio to continue playing despite his utter lack of any discernable talent. And he batted him in the lead-off hole for well over half a season, meaning he allowed a guy with a sub-.300 OBP to be the linch-pin of the offense.

As for pitching, he seemed to overuse certain bullpen arms (Kiko Calero and Clay Hensley this year were analogous to Peter Moylan, if not quite so extreme), but never seemed to utterly mismanage it. The starters seemed to do relatively well under Fredi, he kept them on rather nice pitch counts (about 110-120 warranted removal) while usually removing them when they began to tire.

My only huge complaints about Fredi are the Bonifacio issue (although, how much of that is the front office is hard to tell) and his reluctance to change the lineup when a player begins to struggle. Other than that, he’s a very capable manager.

Last year he ran out Emilio Bonifacio and his .303 OBP as an everyday player, almost always in either the 1 or 2 hole, simply because he was fast. Other than that he seemed fine. I’m not a big believer in managers having huge impacts anyway.

I’d say bullpen management was a bit iffy. Will play lefty/righty matchups regardless of pitcher’s track record (e.g., Pinto, a lefty, is better against RHB) or quality of batter (e.g., in a Phillies game, IBBing a bench player to get to Werth, lol). But I guess that’s a given for most managers.

i dont like braves fans