Here is everything you need to know about the Jarred Kelenic/Ronald Acuña Jr./Brian Snitker controversy inside the Atlanta Braves team that has been raging since it happened Saturday night.
1. Start with the manager.
The worst part of the episode was not Kelenic’s lack of hustle or Acuña using social media to throw his manager under the bus. It was that Snitker, the Braves manager, was caught unaware of what happened on an important, highly visible play on the field. Snitker said he was not aware of Kelenic’s mistake until the following morning.
This was damning on so many levels. Kelenic was thrown out at second base in the sixth inning of a tie game after he watched his flyball hit off the right field wall. The Minnesota Twins challenged the play. Replays were shown on the videoboard.
The first thing every manager should do when a player is thrown out on a close play on any base is ask what went wrong. Did the runner get a poor jump? Did he have the proper secondary lead? Did he read the ball correctly? Did the base coach give proper instructions? Survey your coaches. Check the iPad. Taking such inventory should be standard procedure.
Where is Snitker’s staff on this? If Snitker did indeed miss Kelenic’s mistake, why did no one else on the staff give him a heads up? Kelenic watched his flyball with his bat in his hand right in front of the Atlanta dugout. Cameras caught him watching the flight of the ball. Those images can be found on every tablet in the dugout or, in this case, on the giant videoboard.
Everybody saw it. A radio reporter who saw it asked Snitker after the game about it. And still Snitker knew nothing and heard no alarms to heed.
“I feel sorry for Snit on this,” said a high-ranking official with another team. “He’s a good manager. But by far the worst thing about this was Snit’s obliviousness.”
2. Kelenic should not have been running hard.
I can’t believe how so many people overlooked this: there was a runner at first base and no outs. The runner, Nick Allen, gave a textbook response to a flyball to right field with less than two outs: He turned and watched the right fielder while taking a few shuffle steps. The all-nine camera angle shows that when the ball hit the wall Allen properly was only halfway to second base. He also was flat-footed as he looked to make sure whether right fielder Trevor Larnach caught the ball or not. Only then did he run.
Kelenic has a runner in front of him who was stopped to read the ball. His speed and path are governed by the lead runner. You can see his eyes alternately reading the outfielder and the runner. Only armchair managers think runners should run all-out all the time.
When Snitner benched Acuña in 2019, it followed a similar incident but with the lead runner on second base, not first base. You are in no danger of running down a lead runner two bases ahead.
3. Kelenic still messed up.
He need not have been busting it out of the box, but Kelenic must give at least an honest effort—a strong jog toward first base. Even with a stopped lead runner immediately ahead, he must give himself the opportunity for as many bases as possible. Kelenic has no business, as he did, swinging so far from the basepath that he neared the warning track. Nor should he be holding his bat until he almost reached the first-base coaching box. He pimped a flyball and got burned.
“We hold players accountable,” says the high-ranking rival. “Our guys know there’s still a way [with a lead runner] to get down the line. It may not be busting it full speed the way an amateur fan thinks. But it definitely is not carrying the bat all the way down the line and swinging out to the dugout.”
4. Acuña buried Snitker.
The rule of thumb for professional managers and players is “Praise publicly, criticize privately.” Acuña had every right to perceive a double standard from the way Snitker responded to the two incidents, even if the details were not exactly alike. But good teammates don’t put another teammate, no less a manager, on public blast. The fact that Acuña took down his tweet quickly after he posted it tells you it was a wrong decision by a franchise player signed to an eight-year, $100 million deal.
Good teammates call out others for a lack of hustle in private, such as pulling the player down the dugout tunnel out of camera range or taking care of it in the clubhouse after the game.
5. Kelenic is running out of chances.
Kelenic will lose playing time and maybe his spot on the roster once Acuña comes off the injured list next month. The guy has never hit and yet he keeps getting playing time. He has hit .211 in almost 1,478 plate appearances with a .283 OBP. Among active players with that many plate appearances, only two backup catchers, Martin Maldonado and Austin Hedges, have been worse at getting on base. Among outfielders through their first 403 games (and at least 1,400 plate appearances) Kelenic is the worst at getting on base since Darryl Motley from 1981 to ’86.
6. The Braves are in trouble.
Even with winning three from Minnesota last weekend, Atlanta is 8–13 and already must play uphill in a stacked National League in which the entry for postseason play may be even higher than the 89 wins from last year. This is the 28th time the Braves have started no better than 8–13. They went on to win at least 89 games only twice (1914 and 2010). Snitker is on the last year of his contract. His lack of awareness, Acuña’s tweet and a lack of voice from the clubhouse hint at leadership problems that must be fixed.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as No One Comes Off Well in Braves’ Three-Pronged Drama.
