NEW YORK – Is this rock bottom? Or is that still to come?
This is not intended to be sarcasm. It is instead an acknowledgment that nothing seems to be improving for these Braves.
It is only becoming worse by the night.
They are going through it – and cannot seem to find a way out.
Friday’s 8-4 loss to the Mets at Citi Field felt like the lowest point of the season for two reasons:
- This is the first time the Braves have lost six in a row since September 2017, when they dropped six straight in the final week of the season during their rebuild.
- The Mets overtook the Braves for the top National League wild-card spot, as Atlanta now trails New York by half a game there and in the NL East standings.
Five observations:
1. Braves president of baseball operations and general manager Alex Anthopoulos is a magician. And this time, he’ll need to execute his finest, most creative trick – if there is even one to be made.
At this moment, the Braves need life injected into them.
Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider aren’t walking through the door. Ozzie Albies is out for two months. Max Fried is on the injured list. Michael Harris II won’t be back until the middle of August at the earliest.
Until then, the Braves must stop the bleeding. They cannot let this season – one with so much promise – get away. They still have talent in that clubhouse.
“I would say the feeling in the clubhouse has been very much the same as it has been the past three years that I’ve been here,” Charlie Morton said of this skid. “Certainly, yeah, is there a little difference, is there an awareness? Of course there is. But I just don’t feel like, even when things aren’t going our way or weren’t going our way, that there was that big of a difference on the bench and in the clubhouse. The guys are just really even-keeled. They’re really calm. It’s maybe subtleties. Maybe there’s subtle things that are a little bit different. But I’ve been on teams where there was no similarity between when the team is going well and (not).”
Is that even-keeled feeling the same as always or is there a sense of urgency?
“There’s definitely a sense of urgency,” Travis d’Arnaud said. “Now that it’s been over 100 games and this five-game skid, or six-game – I don’t know exactly how many. Yeah, we know we gotta get it going and just try to win every series. We’re down 2-0, we still got two left and hopefully we can even up the series and go to Milwaukee on a high note.”
And what is the balance between the players’ calmness and that sense of urgency?
“I don’t know,” manager Brian Snitker said. “t’s like, when the game starts, they’re going out and they’re battling the at-bats. It’s easy on the periphery like this to talk about that stuff. When the game starts, they’re thinking about playing the game and getting results. The game doesn’t work that way. I wish it was that easy, to go out and have a sense of urgency and now do good. It doesn’t work that way.”
This is true. The Braves clearly care. They’re trying.
But goodness, it has been brutal. This is the ugliest baseball the Braves have played in quite some time, and you can debate whether they even deserve meaningful additions by Tuesday’s deadline. They’ve fallen victim to injuries and underperformance – the worst combination.
If you are a Braves fan, you can take solace in the fact that Anthopoulos, who makes the decisions, is among the best in the industry.
2. J.D. Martinez connected with a four-seam fastball low and away, and Morton watched it fly. Adam Duvall ran back to the right-field wall, until his back was against it, then jumped. But the ball hit the top of the wall and went over for a grand slam.
Pandemonium ensued.
This blast was the largest blow in one of the worst innings you’ll ever see from a starting pitcher.
Morton felt great in warmups. He carried it into the first inning. He made it through a scoreless second.
“And then in the third inning, lost feel for the ball,” Morton said. “Sometimes I’ll throw it and it’s like, I don’t know how to correct. My timing was just off.”
In the bottom of the third, Morton – given a two-run lead in the second inning – served up home runs to three of the final six batters he faced. After the third bomb, Snitker decided he’d seen enough and walked out to yank Morton.
That three-homer stretch went like this: Grand slam, groundout, double, two-run homer, groundout, solo homer. Mark Vientos blasted the two-run shot, and Francisco Alvarez smoked the solo one.
And even before the grand slam, Morton wobbled. He couldn’t find the zone. The Mets loaded the bases on an error by Austin Riley, a hit by pitch and a walk.
In a three-batter stretch that loaded the bases, Morton hurled 10 straight pitches out of the zone. (Only nine were balls because Martinez swung at a pitch below the zone and hit it foul a few pitches before homering.) On a four-pitch walk to Brandon Nimmo, Morton wasn’t close.
“It kind of looked like he just couldn’t make any adjustments,” Snitker said. “Just got out of whack.”
3. Have the Braves earned the right to have meaningful additions by the deadline?
“That’s not what I need to be focusing on,” Duvall said. “I need to be focusing on going out there and putting together some good at-bats, and playing some good defense behind the guys on the mound. And that’s what I’ll continue to do.”
He did that with two home runs – one in the second, the other in the ninth.
But the Braves cannot seem to break through. They work hard. They care. The effort is clearly there.
It just isn’t happening.
“The most important thing is playing your best brand of baseball down the stretch,” Duvall said. “That’s what we’re gonna try and do, that’s what we’ve been working for all year. That’s been the mindset behind the preparation that we put in each and every day. We just gotta continue to do that. We’ve been saying it for a while now, but eventually the chips are gonna fall. I think that we’ll be right where we need to be.”
Asked if he’s seen any signs that a turnaround could happen soon, Duvall said this:
“I see the maturity. We’ve got guys that have been doing this for a long time, guys that have been at the peak, they’ve been in the valley, back at the peak. I think that’s the biggest thing about a club that you can see is the lack of quit and the knowledge that, ‘Hey, this is a tough game’ and that you gotta keep showing up or this game will humble you real quick. I see it behind the scenes, that guys are continuing to keep doing what they’ve been doing if they’re having success, or making adjustments. Eventually, those adjustments will pay off.”
4. Some context on Morton’s nightmare start:
- Morton matched a career high by allowing three homers. This was only the seventh time in 372 career games that he’d done this.
- He’s started 371 games in a career that began in 2008. He’s pitched 2 2/3 innings or fewer in 21 of those. Since the start of 2021, he’s only done this five times.
- The amount of times Morton has gone 2 2/3 innings or shorter with at least five earned runs? Nine, including Friday.
5. You won’t like to hear this, but it’s true: For a starting pitcher, nights like this happen. No one is perfect.
The issue is that, for months, the Braves have failed to capitalize on one of baseball’s best starting rotations. Too often, they’ve wasted a starter’s terrific outing – like they did with Chris Sale’s start on Thursday. Too many times, their pitching has put them in a position to win, only for the bats to go quiet.
“They’ve been carrying us all year,” Duvall said of the starters. “Those nights are gonna happen. We just gotta keep chipping away, man. We gotta keep showing up, doing what we know works, and eventually it’ll start working again.”
Many fans will direct their anger toward Morton after this loss. He pitched poorly, but these performances happen.
The problem lies with an offense that cannot afford them because it has spent all season missing opportunities provided by its pitching.
Stat to know
35-41 - Since the start of play on April 29, the Braves are 35-41.
Quotable
“It’s not my job to think about what we can get at the trade deadline. As far as us as a team, we just gotta keep going, man. It’s a little rut we’re in. We just gotta always have each other’s backs and just keep going out there and doing the best we can.” - d’Arnaud
Up next
On Saturday, Spencer Schwellenbach will attempt to help Atlanta end its skid. The game begins at 4:10 p.m.
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