ATLANTA - It was last Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles, a few hours before the Atlanta Braves would play their first postseason game since 2013 by facing the Dodgers in a National League Division Series.
In a pregame press conference at Dodger Stadium, someone asked Braves skipper Brian Snitker to discuss his long and winding road to the majors after decades spent in Atlanta's minor league system.
"A lot of guys that are coming in, especially in the major leagues, it's so much more analytically driven," Snitker said. "I spent my whole career managing with my eyes, my gut, my instinct, things like that, more than matchups, numbers, heat charts, maps, all that kind of stuff."
Your eyes. Your gut. Your instincts.
That's what used to separate all the great coaches and managers in all sports from the mediocre ones. It was all about feel. You just felt, in your gut and with your eyes, that Player A or Strategy B was better at a certain moment than Player B or Strategy A.
Couldn't prove it with a spread sheet or artificial intelligence. If it worked, you were a genius. If it failed, well, maybe you'd be lucky enough to fight another day.
But that's the world Snitker embraced, one strongly influenced by former Atlanta manager Bobby Cox and longtime executive John Schuerholz. And sometime within his first month of turning 63 on Oct. 17, Snitker should win the 2018 NL Manager of the Year Award at least partly because of those gut instincts. If he does, he'll become just the second Braves skipper so honored, along with Cox, who won the award three times from 1991 to 2005.
Beyond that, when Snitker first met with the Braves this season, basically the same team he managed to a 72-90 record a year ago, he brought up that 1991 season, the one in which a very young Braves team - though not as young as these Baby Braves, currently the youngest MLB team - went from worst to first, then forced the Minnesota Twins to seven games in the World Series before falling just short.
"There's a lot of similarities with this group and what happened 27 years ago," Snitker said he told the Braves in spring training, according to a recent USA Today article. "The makeup, the personality of these players, is huge. Some people say makeup is not a tool. Let me tell you, makeup has always been a tool for the Atlanta Braves.''
In other words, chemistry matters. A gut feeling about which personalities and talents will best complement each other matters. In Snitker's case, 43 years spent in the Braves organization soaking up all that wisdom and baseball philosophy from Cox and Schuerholz matters.
Snitker's dream of taking this 2018 team to the World Series isn't over yet, either. After dropping the first two games of the NLDS in Los Angeles, the Braves won 6-5 as the series shifted to SunTrust Park, where they'll play again today to try to send things back to the West Coast.
Before the game, referencing the Braves' youth and lack of depth, Snitker admitted, "We are what we are. There's not a lot of options."
But he also said of his team: "They've had a really good time playing baseball. It's a really neat group for me to be around in that respect, how they like to work and they prepare very well."
The players have similarly embraced Snitker, veteran first baseman Freddie Freeman said.
"He cares more about the person than the player," Freeman told USA Today. "It's refreshing. You don't have to walk on eggshells around him. He's the reason why everybody has fun around here. He created an environment where he lets everybody be themselves.''
This has long been the Braves' way, at least as far back as 1991.
As longtime Dodgers pitching coach and Chattanooga native Rick Honeycutt noted early Sunday evening: "It shows the loyalty of the Braves franchise that they've put (Snitker) in this position and have given him a chance to succeed. He had a great leader to learn from in Bobby (Cox), and the Braves players clearly love playing for him."
Yet loving the guy you play for and playing well for that guy are two different things. It's been written that the Braves considered firing Snitker after last season. The organization's decision to wait one more year has delivered not only a playoff team but one that proved its worth far beyond its 90-72 regular-season record alone. Atlanta finished second in the league in batting to the Chicago Cubs and fifth in pitching with a team ERA of 3.75.
To understand the importance of those stats, the top three teams in batting average all made the NL playoffs and four of the first five in ERA got there. Chicago and Atlanta were the only two teams to be in the top five in both categories.
At the start of this postseason, reflecting on his time in the minors, Snitker recalled the all-night bus rides, as well as the night one of those buses blew a tire, causing the manager and his young men to spend the night in a machine shed while the owner of that shed went to find them another tire as his wife fed them sandwiches and Cokes.
"I wouldn't trade those years for anything," he said. "Just the experiences, the relationships that we have today. I got a Christmas card list that's just unbelievable. I spend a small fortune every year because of all the people that you meet and the relationships that you have and the friendships that come from that."
And while this may be little more than a gut feeling today, my instincts tell me that when Snitker sends those cards this year, he will almost assuredly be able to write: Merry Christmas from the NL Manager of the Year.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.