The buzzards are circling for Fredi Gonzalez. It should hardly come as a surprise that the manager of a 4-17 team would face speculation about his job, but that also does not mean it makes complete sense.

Columnist on his blog for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday with a piece titled, For the 4-17 Braves, theres no choice but to fire Fredi G. As , this can be taken as a pretty good sign that Gonzalez is indeed on his way out, based on the AJCs pattern of Braves coverage over the years.

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The problem is that the case for dropping the ax on Gonzalez now revolves around Atlanta being4-17. This is a team that was built to lose, with no illusions of being a competitive team in the final year of Turner Field. The Braves may not have expected to be quite this bad, but you can also look at their schedule so far and understand losing 17 of 21.

The Braves started by dropping two games to the Nationals, then three Eric Dickerson Jersey to the Cardinals. They went to Washington and lost four more before sweeping the Marlins in Miami. After a home win against the Dodgers, Atlanta lost the last two games of that series, then got swept by the Mets in a three-game set and the Red Sox in two games before a return matchup at Fenway Park on Wednesday resulted in an eighth straight lo s.

With that early schedule, the Braves best hope was probablysomething like 8-13. They have a 1-5 record in one-run games, and if you flip that around, 8-13 is exactly what you Jared Goff Jersey would get. Maybe if Freddie Freeman hadnt opened the season in a slump, or if Julio Teheran hadnt struggled with his control as much as he has, or if the Braves had more good players. But the thing is, it doesnt matter, and never did, because the Braves are built to lose, and lose is what they are doing.

Doing nothing is no longer an option, Bradley wrote. They cant allow 4-17 to become 8-34.

Why not? Seriously, who cares? Whether the Braves lose 100 games or 110 games this year is immaterial. The question that the Atlanta front office should be asking is whether Gonzalez is the right man for the actual task at hand. That would be teaching and instilling a profe sional workplace environment for a young team with more young players on the way as the summer goes on.

If the Braves were going to fire Gonzalez for results-based baseball reasons, they should have done it after Game 4 of the 2013 NLDS, when Gonzalez saved Craig Kimbrel for a bottom of Jalen Ramsey Jersey the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium that never happened after Juan Uribes two-run homer in the eighth off David Carpenter. They should have done it after the 2014 season, when Gonzalez presided over a team that was tied for the division lead at the All-Star break and went on to finish 17 games behind. They should have done it after last years 95-lo s debacle, but instead gave Gonzalez and his coaching staff contract extensions in the middle of it.

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As , By offering such extensions to a manager and coaches of a team that was five games below .500 at the break, the Two Johns (Hart John Kelly Jersey and Coppolella, the front office brain trust) e sentially said, Were about to gut this roster even more, and this is our way of saying nothing that happens will be held against you.

Unle s something has changed behind the scenes to make the Braves believe that Gonzalez is not the right fit to command respect and help his players improve on a personal level while the team routinely gets slaughtered, there is no particular reason that a change has Joe Namath Jersey to be made now. If the idea last summer was that the teardown was going to continue which it did and that the results on the field would not be held against Gonzalez, using the results to justify Gonzalezs dismi sal makes le s sense than at almost any other point in his tenure.

If the Braves don't believe Gonzalez is the person to lead them back to contention, by all means fire him and start looking for the right person. There already is plenty of evidence in that column. Just don't pretend that a bunch of lo ses early ina season that the Atlanta front office punted before it started is appropriate justification.