an alternate path

At this stage of his life, with his baseball playing career in the rearview mirror, Aaron Holbert figured he would be a forensic pathologist.
Or a crime scene investigator. Maybe a pharmacist.
“Those three things interested me,” Holbert said in a recent interview.
Yet six years after he last played a game, the 38-year-old California native finds himself still very much in the game. He’ll manage the Double-A Mississippi Braves in 2012 with four seasons of managerial experience under his belt and a seemingly bright future ahead in the profession.
Holbert was named the Carolina League manager of the year last season as the skipper of the Cleveland Indians’ Class A Kinston (N.C.) club, and Baseball America selected him as the manager on its Advanced Class A postseason All-Star team.
The Atlanta Braves hired him in October to run their Double-A club, which has produced a ton of major league talent over seven seasons in Pearl but has made the Southern League playoffs just twice, the last time in 2008.
“It’s a big challenge for me and the staff, too,” said Holbert, who will be assisted by returning coaches Mike Alvarez and Garey Ingram. “As a young manager in my first year of Double-A ball, first year with the Braves and in the National League, with the double switches … all that’s intriguing. I’m up for the challenge.”
Before 2005, Holbert would never have predicted this career path.
“If I didn’t make it as a major league player, I thought I’d go back to school and pursue some other career,” he said.
But when he was playing in the Cincinnati Reds organization in ’05 — a season in which he spent 22 games in the big leagues — Holbert began to hear “rumblings” from Reds brass.
“Different people were telling me, ‘You’d make a great coach when you retire,’” he said. “I’d never thought about (working in baseball) before that, but from then on it was in my mind.”
He spent most of the 2005 season at Triple-A Louisville, where his manager was Rick Sweet, who managed the old Jackson Generals in 1991 and ’92.
“I started to pay closer attention to how he ran the games,” Holbert said. “I’d sit next to him and ask him things. … I’m grateful to him for taking me under his wing. He allowed me to look inside his mind. Some of the things I do came from him.”
Holbert rattles off George Kissell, Joe Pettini, John Goryl, Bruce Fields and Gary Thurman as other influences on his managerial style.
He formally set off on that path in 2006, after an injury in spring training left him as “the odd man out” in the Louisville infield.
“Johnny Almarez, the Reds’ farm director at the time who’s now with the Braves, asked me if I wanted to try a coaching job, and I said OK,” Holbert said. “I went to the Gulf Coast League as an extra coach. The next year I was the hitting coach in Billings (Mont.), and in 2008, I got the chance to manage with Cleveland (at low-A Lake County in Ohio) and jumped on it.
“I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
And he appears to have an aptitude for pushing the right buttons.
His first Lake County team reached the South Atlantic League championship round and his Kinston clubs were in the postseason both years he was there.
Holbert managed against the Braves’ Carolina League club the last two years, so he already has some familiarity with many of the players he’ll likely have in 2012. Pitcher Zeke Spruill, outfielders Mycal Jones and Cory Harrilchak, highly touted shortstop Andrelton Simmons and first baseman Joe Terdoslavich are among that group.
Holbert, who attended Atlanta’s Florida instructional league camp in the fall, will be the first M-Braves manager not to have a background in the Atlanta system. He said he was enticed by Atlanta’s offer to manage at the Double-A level, calling it “a great opportunity to be part of this respected organization.”
“I fully acknowledge that I have things to learn and I’m willing to lean on my staff when I need them,” Holbert said. “I want to become a better manager and prepare the players the best we can for Triple-A and to help the big league club.”
The presumption is that Holbert will bring a youthful exuberance to the M-Braves’ clubhouse as well as a keen understanding of minor league life.
He played in 1,542 minor league games over 17 seasons. He was a first-round draft pick — 18th overall — out of Long Beach, Calif., by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1990. He passed through Jackson in 1994, playing shortstop for the Double-A Arkansas Travelers in 1994.
He made it to the big leagues in 1996 but got into just one game with the Cardinals. He didn’t make another major league appearance until 2005 with the Reds.
“I can relate to the younger players,” Holbert said. “I understand what it’s like to go on those bus rides, to live on $20 meal money, to be away from your family so much. To have a staff that can relate to all that … it makes it easier to get things across to the players.”
Holbert’s debut with the M-Braves will be April 5 at Trustmark Park.