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Saturday, July 15, 2006
Wild-card thinking could hurt Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Braves came off the All-Star break thinking they have a realistic chance to win the wild card, and in professional sports it’s almost always better to win than to lose. A playoff berth for this substandard team would count among the exceptions.
Over the last 15 seasons, the Braves have fallen into the trap that snares all winning teams: They have lost the knack of seeing themselves as they really are. They didn’t come north from spring training thinking, “You know, we’re a substandard team with no leadoff man and no first baseman and a wretched bullpen.” They thought this instead: “We’re the Braves and we always win our division, and because we’re the Braves we’ll win again.”
Good as they’ve been, the Braves haven’t been quite as good lately. Over the seven full seasons from 1992 through 2000 — ‘94 and ‘95 were shortened due to the strike — the Braves averaged 100 wins. Over the last five seasons they’ve averaged 95. They’ve won one playoff series since the 22-year-old Andruw Jones drew the bases-loaded walk off Kenny Rogers in 1999.
Yes, much of this has to do with Time Warner’s payroll limitations. Remember those giddy days in the late ’90s when the Braves and Yankees matched one another dollar for dollar? Well, the Yankees’ outlay climbed above $200 million last year; the Braves’ is now less than half that. It isn’t always true that you get what you pay for — the Yankees, remember, haven’t won any of the last five World Series — but being able to spend is the difference between having a real closer and hoping (against hope) Chris Reitsma pans out.
The Braves’ master plan has been reduced to praying Bobby Cox thinks of something. He did in 2003, when he didn’t have a real No. 1 starter, and in 2004, when he didn’t have much of a team at all, and again last year, when he had a slew of rookies. But this time even he couldn’t override an absolute dearth of capable relievers, and it’s a credit to his managerial acumen that this team reached the break only nine games under .500.
A 7-3 homestand put the Braves within mathematical reach of the wild card — they’re now 5 1/2 back — but it’s hard to imagine any scenario in which these Braves could finish ahead of the Astros or the Dodgers over 162 games. OK, you’re saying, but these are the Braves, and they’ve become experts at flouting logical scenarios. And that, folks, is the point.
Somewhere along the line the Braves have to start viewing themselves not as the division winners they’ve been since 1991 but as what they’ve become — a team that needed a big homestand to pull within nine games of .500. They’re no longer equipped with All-Stars at every position, no longer the owners of a rotation featuring three or four No. 1 starters. They’re a substandard team without a leadoff man, a first baseman, a closer and a true ace. (Tim Hudson’s record as a Brave is 20-17.)
They have as many weaknesses as strengths. They don’t need to be propping up this rickety roster with a deadline deal that will cost prospects; they need to be making deals with an eye toward shoring up a future that, for all the gifted rookies who delivered a division championship in 2005, isn’t anything near a certainty.
The Braves stopped being what we’d come to consider the Braves the first three months of the 2006 season, but in truth they haven’t been those Braves for more than three years. They’ve been getting by, mixing and matching, winning not because they had the most talent but because nobody else in the NL East could figure out how winning worked. The Mets finally got it right, and the Mets aren’t going to be bad again anytime soon.
In a weird way, an improbable wild-card run would be long-term counterproductive. If the Braves could make the playoffs with this middling crew, it would only deepen their conviction that they can win no matter what kind of team they run out there. They need to disabuse themselves of that notion posthaste. They need to stop making do. They need to start getting good again.
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