When Walt Weiss was playing shortstop at UNC, he was tough to keep out of the lineup.
“‘Don’t even think about taking me out of the lineup unless the bone’s sticking out and maybe not even then,” former Tar Heel coach Mike Roberts once said of Weiss’ desire to play.
Now in second stint as a big-league manager, Weiss displays a different attitude.
“I like to keep those guys involved,” Weiss said of his reserve players. “I don’t like guys sitting on the bench a couple weeks without having touched the field and then expect them to do well when they have to play.”
In fact, Weiss, who takes over as manager of the Braves after eight years on the team’s coaching staff, pushed for a roster that allowed him to rest players.
“Walt talked about it in his interview,” Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos. “His preference was to have the DH spot be open, just to be able to get guys off their feet and so on.”
As a result, the team allowed All-Star designated hitter Marcell Ozuna to leave in free agency.
“It gives you some freedom,” Weiss said. “I mean, if Alex signs some big hairy guy to be our DH, I’d go for that too. But the way we’re constructed right now: (Drake) Baldwin—he’s a catcher. You cant run him into the ground but you’d like to keep his bat in there when you can. There’s a spot for him. Ronald (Acuna Jr.) has two repaired knees. Maybe some days you use that spot for him. You can go right around the diamond and talk about it for everyone. It’s very fluid. I do like the flexibility it gives me with constructing a lineup.”
“It allows us to move guys around, and I think that’s gonna fit Walt’s style,” Anthopoulos said.
While Weiss has plenty of top-level talent to lean on, he also plans to make sure every man on the roster feels valued. It’s one of his strengths as a coach, and now a manager.
“I just think our bench is going to be deeper than it’s been since I’ve been here,” he said, pointing out the offseason acquisitions of role players Mauricio Dubon, Mike Yastrzemski and Jonah Heim. “We can win the matchup game pretty good. … The matchup thing, it’s pretty tough to get the advantage on us, with all the pieces we have. We’re not a platoon team. Our guys are gonna play. But I’m also gonna pick spots to get them off their feet here and there. We have versatility. We have flexibility. We have a lot of ways we can spin that lineup and create the matchup advantage for ourselves.”
Weiss played 14 years in the Majors. He was Rookie of the Year, an All-Star and world champion. He managed the Rockies from 2013 to 2016, never finishing above .500. Now he takes over a Braves team that had a string of seven straight trips to the playoffs snapped last year. He shrugs at the daunting task of keeping that run of success going.
“Pressure’s built into this league,” he said. “It’s there every day when you wake up. It’s just like that in professional sports. We know that. We sign up for it.”
Despite spending the better part of the last decade in a Braves uniform, Weiss has been busy this spring making sure the players feel like they know him.
“I try to go out of my way to connect with guys every day,” he said. “I think it’s important. People talk about the line between manager and player, but I tend to blur those lines a little bit. I think you have to connect on a personal level to get the most out of these guys. They have to trust you, and a lot of them don’t trust easily. I get it. You have to earn that. To get the most out of them, they’ve got to know you care about them, and it’s got to be genuine. You can’t fake that stuff.”
“Walt’s obviously easy to get along with,” Anthopoulos added.
The players have remarked about seeing Weiss, a black belt in taekwondo who also dabbles in MMA and jiu jitsu, work out in the weight room, a far cry from old school managers who expect players to come to their office to have any communication or interaction.
“It’s part of job I really like, to be honest with you,” he said. “I feel like I can relate to players. I’ve walked in their shoes. I’ve left blood on the same fields they’re bleeding on.”
Even if, back in the day, he would have had issues with a manager expecting him to take a day off to get patched up.
