Quantitatively speaking—my preferred language when it comes to analysis — it’s much too early to draw any conclusions about the 2017 Braves. The sample sizes are too small. I can’t offer much insight on that front.
But qualitatively speaking . . . yikes!
The Braves allowed seven unearned runs while getting swept in Pittsburgh and those giveaways led directly to all three losses. Just to mix things up they threw in another bullpen meltdown Sunday.
The Braves (1-5) have been sloppy on defense. Their losses have been ugly, their gaffes untimely, and their explanations mystified.
“I don’t know,” manager Brian Snitker said. “I didn’t expect that. If you’d asked me coming in, I’d say no. I don’t know. It’s not because of lack of preparation or anything like that. It’s just a lack of making plays. We’ve got to play catch better. We’ve got to just make plays. You give teams extra outs and runs like that, and it’s hard to win.”
I think there’s a difference between losing baseball and bad baseball.
Losing baseball tends to be the result of not being good enough: too few hitters and not enough pitchers to beat the better teams. It happens, especially during a rebuild.
Bad baseball is the result of persistent, fundamental mistakes made by professionals. That shouldn’t happen with any team in the big leagues.
The Braves are playing bad baseball. Like all big leaguers they fine-tuned their defense during the spring. They take infield before games. Their outfielders practice running to the ball, catching the ball and throwing it.
And then the lights come on and the Braves go out and kick it around.
Why?
“It’s baseball,” Freddie Freeman said Sunday. “That’s the beauty of this game. That’s why you play so many games. Every day can be completely different. You can feel good at the plate and go ‘o-fer’ and feel good in the field and still make an error.
"It’s the way the games have been going right now in the last week, so hopefully this day off will clear our minds, get this loss out of our heads and come back Tuesday.”
You know things are going bad when, just one week into the season, the Braves are looking forward to a day off to recharge.
The Braves have put a shoddy product on the field so far in 2017. That’s a big deal because they officially open their new ballpark Friday. The Braves have two games in Miami to get their act together before returning home to play in front of paying customers who’ve been told by Braves brass that this team will be much better (and they really, really mean it this time).
Fans might be patient with losing baseball while enjoying the new stadium. I doubt they'll put up with bad baseball for too long, no matter how pretty the park.
Listen, maybe the Braves go on a run of playing crisp, clean baseball and everyone will forget the unsightly first week.
“We are all looking for that rhythm right now,” R.A. Dickey said after his start Saturday. “And it will come. We’ve got the pedigree in here. It will come. We just don’t need to panic. But we do need to be honest about what we need to do better and that’s the only way you grow as a baseball team.
“I think everyone in here will tell you we’ve started the season sloppy and there’s a lot of room to clean things up, and I think we will.”
And then the Braves went out the next day and gave up three more unearned runs in another unsightly loss.
Yeah, it’s early. But, man, this is bad baseball.
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