The Braves announced that they have hired Jeremy Hefner as pitching coach and Antoan Richardson as first base coach. Henfer replaces Rick Kranitz while Richardson replaces Tom Goodwin. Mark Bowman of MLB.com reports that third base coach Fredi Gonzalez won’t be returning to Atlanta next year either.

41 comments

  1. Brutal lol. I thought Richardson was looking for a promotion to bench coach or something and that’s why he wasn’t coming back. This is a bad look. I guess he has a better path to manager in Atlanta? I trust that the FO tried hard to bring him back but it just sucks. And it’s not fun that I can’t root for Hef’s success anymore.

  5. Stearns masterclass in action. Fucking kill me. Can’t wait to see the Braves have half their lineup make 30/30 seasons.

    Edit: downvote me all you want. Stearns is a penny pinching, dumpster diving fraud. Letting Richardson walk over salary with the deepest pockets in baseball is an embarrassing move. The guy helped Soto go from a below average base runner into an absolute menace who nearly went 40/40 (who was only caught stealing 4 times the entire season!)

  14. At the end of the day these are coaches. There are many good ones out there. We need to clean house, need a new approach. My confidence in Stearns has taken a hit, but not so much of a hit that I feel confident to weigh in on coaching decisions.

  16. soooo this was about money……… im a stearns stan but im starting to get mike ellias vibes from this dude, hes trying to get cute with the money.

  18. All the people defending Stearns about Richardson. He leaves for the same job at a competitor. Beyond unacceptable from stearns

  19. If it’s found out that we seriously let Antoan Richardson walk just because the front office didn’t want to pay an extra $200k or whatever then I’m going to crash out. People will say that “it’s just a 1st base coach it doesn’t matter”. But 3 of the last 4 Mets seasons have been decided by 1 game. In fact, you could say that we missed the playoffs this year because our 3rd base coach held Taylor that one time, and if he didn’t hold him, it would have won us 1 more game than we did and we make the playoffs. Stuff like this matters. It’s such an easy way to improve the team (even if it’s marginal) and we didn’t do it.

  20. I would absolutely love for all the people defending letting Richardson walk because he, according to them, was looking for a promotion, to come out and try to defend this now. Please someone attempt to do so because the excuses are getting harder and harder to come by.

  23. You can talk up Hefner all you want but i’m convinced the only reason Atlanta signed Hef is to stick it in the Mets faces when he gets Atlanta to have 1 of the best pitching staffs in baseball. Embarrassing the Mets is probably #2 on the list below winning a World Series…

  24. There is going to be a front page r/baseball post of Soto getting picked off/caught stealing against the Braves guaranteed

  28. It’s crazy how people aren’t giving Stearns a shot. He took the small market Brewers with cheap ass owners and made them a perennial playoff team. You gotta give this guy some time to cook. Building an org takes time.

  29. From Puma:

    >Antoan Richardson told us he left the Mets for the Braves because of a difference in opinion over his value.

    “I had a proposed salary with (benefits) included,” he said. “The Mets had a proposed salary with (benefits) included. We differed on the salary part of it.”

    Assuming this is true Stearns needs to be launched into the Sun barring a miracle free agency and deadline next year.

    Completely unacceptable to cheap out on our best coach and lose him to a division rival.

  30. The Braves pounced to get both Richardson & Hefner. That is going to cost the Mets big time.

  32. Hot take here. The Grimace Mets were fun but it set back “the plan”. I really believe Stearns was going to fire sale in 2024, maybe even get rid of some coaches, and we’d have a very different team right now. Stearns is getting the criticism because the 2024 success flamed out and 2025 was a disaster. Hopefully the plan is back on.

  33. Richardson was great for us but I would be lying if I said I’m gonna miss Hefner. Just look at our second half pitching

  35. The season’s barely even cold and this sub is already having a meltdown about Stearns lol, I’m off to hibernate until the spring.

  38. I understand why people are freaking out – but its not like Richardson turned the entire team into base stealing Machines all on his own and in his absence we can never steal a base again. He was our first base coach in 2024 and we were 16th in the league in SB. Before he was hired in 2023 we were 13th in the league, so in his first year we actually got worse. The entire jump from 2024 to 2025 can be explained almost entirely by Juan Soto – for example Lindor had the same # of steal ins 2023 and 2025(31) and 29 in 2024.

    He was also the first base coach for SF giants from 2019-2023 where they posted league ranks of 24(2020) 16(2021), 22(2022) and 30(2023) after which he was fired by SF. Our base stealing this year is an outlier for Richardson as a 1st base coach – not the rule. Its the only season he has been a first base coach where the team he coached finished in the top half of the league in SB totals. Anyone outraged by this is doing so solely to be outraged about something.

    There are a ton of factors that go into base stealing totals – but lets not pretend that Richardson has been some perennially all time first base coach turning teams into stealing machines.

  41. Can’t wait to see Stearns let Pete and Diaz walk too, and replace them with reclamation players coming off their worst seasons

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