The Atlanta Braves have fired their hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes, and catching coach Sal Fasano. They all had contracts with the Braves through 2025.
These moves are following an early October exit for the Braves, who last season owned the best record in MLB. However, the Braves healthy players all regressed offensively this season. This led to a disappointing ending, a two-game sweep by the San Diego Padres. This is also the third season in a row where the Braves didn’t make it past the Division Series in the postseason since being World Series champs in 2021.
The #Braves fired hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes and catching coach Sal Fasano, a source confirmed to The Athletic. The team hasn’t announced the moves but the coaches have been informed. Each was under contract with the Braves through 2025.
— David O’Brien (@DOBrienATL) October 10, 2024
Braves Make Big Changes: Hitting Coach and Others Fired
The two hitting coach roles will be filled, but the catching coach position will not. This is primarily because the catching coach position didn’t exist before the fall of 2017 when Fasano was hired for that purpose. He has been a part of the Braves’ past success and has been characterized as “colorful” by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Chipper Jones has been scratched off the list in terms of replacements for either of the hitting coach roles. Manager Alex Anthopoulos made these moves before the offseason so that Seitzer, Magallanes, and Fasano would be granted more time to find new jobs.
However, it was difficult for Atlanta to move on from coaches who had been with the team for a while. Seitzer has been a strong contributor to the Braves’ success. Atlanta had the best team slugging percentage in MLB history last season, so Seitzer deserves a lot of respect for what he did in his time with the team. He had been MLB’s longest-tenured hitting coach, on Atlanta’s staff for the last 10 seasons. Seitzer will certainly be a hot commodity this offseason. He would be a great coaching target this offseason for the Toronto Blue Jays to capitalize on. Toronto fired their hitting coach Guillermo Martinez on September 30th following a subpar offensive season.
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