ATLANTA – Cellini and Dimino are in North Port for Braves Spring Training, and Braves Coach Brian Snitker joined them to talk about the start of the 2024 Season.
AUSTIN RILEY’S LEADERSHIP:
Don’t forget we got a bunch of men there. You know them…Matt Olson, Max Fried, Ozzy…I mean it. There’s just a lot of guys in that club…Charlie, come in you know there’s a lot of these guys that come with instant credibility over what they’ve accomplished in her career and it’s a really good place in that room over there.
JARED KELENIC:
I’m excited to see he’s another one. I’m, I can’t wait for the games to start. Just so you know, we can plug him in and see I just heard about all the talent of watching him hit today. Everything that this young kid brings, and I’m excited for the games to start you know for the guys that I don’t know who see him and…and and see what we have.
MICHAEL HARRIS II NOT MISSING TIME:
I think last year Michael’s the, you know, he missed some valuable time and when you miss early…because everybody’s trying to get their toehold…when we leave spring training and then you miss time, like he did an extent of time that he missed, and you come back guys are starting to hit on all cylinders. And it’s tough to come back when you miss time like that. And and you know what? He hung with himself and we kept putting him in there. It’s crazy. And then he got to go on.
EARLY YEARS CRUCIAL FOR YOUNG PLAYERS:
There’s a lot of things a lot of I would say to the players that they got to peel off to become a Major Leaguer and they’re gonna go through things they never thought possible at this level. And you know what to determine, you know, that determines on the good ones and then going forward and continuing to progress…and guys that maybe get lost in the jungle, and all of a sudden, you’re using them as examples. The other guys that you know are coming up.
SEAN MURPHY HAD A LOT ON HIS PLATE:
Murph comes in and has to learn a whole new pitching staff on top of, you know, performing and you know, and he understood how important that is that game planning, you know, handling the pitchers the whole ball of wax right there, and now I think coming in you’re gonna see a different guy in there. He had a pretty good year you know, when he was a starting Catcher in the National League All Star Game.
EARLY BATTING PRACTICE:
Those guys wanted to hit and, you know, credit to them because they didn’t have to show up till today. But they’ve been here and put themselves in a position to be able to go out there and take batting practice off Spencer…which that’s not an easy ride…and…and it’s good for Spencer to I think to face two guys like that. And then they can get a little feedback on stuff he’s working on and, and everything so it was really good. I thought both the guys out they you know they swung the bat pretty well off I’d be much they say it’s just the bachelor good and Spencer that look really, really good.
ACQUIRING CHRIS SALE:
First thing I thought it was a man who I love having a left hander like that in our division and then when I talked to him, it was even better. Even better. This just I could just hear the excitement in his voice and and the anticipation of being here was really really good and just to know how well he threw at the end of the year last year. So it was really exciting to get a guy that quality and put him in the mix.
WORLD SERIES OR BUST:
It just tells me the guys feel like we have a really good deal. They have high expectations of yourself. As do I mean, I have high expectations for our club. I mean, we expect to do well we expect to win I guess it’s a big difference when I first got here when I used to say that I used to drive to the ballpark and hope we win. And then we knew we’d have to do everything and play pretty much a perfect game to win and then all of a sudden, I remember making that drive one day and it’s like you know what I expect to win now. And that’s a big difference.
SETTING HIGH EXPECTATIONS:
We’ve worked really hard to put ourselves in that position because like I said, when I first got here it there wasn’t any of that kind of tucked away ever now I said we’ve worked really hard to put ourselves in that position and…and that’s fine. I’m good with it.
BIG STAGE MINDSET:
I think there’s guys that just can’t wait for that stage and you see it and you know over the years and we’ve had those guides and we do have those guides and you know it’s I think there is there’s something to that, you know some do that with teams and but as we know you can have all that you can have everything going and things just may not it’s baseball, I mean it’s still you’re playing a series in baseball and we know over the course of seven months it just doesn’t always go as planned.
