Fredi Gonzalez met with some of his Braves in Philadelphia after the trade for Hector Olivera was approved. He said what any manager would: That the season wasn’t over, that the players are still being paid to win no matter who’s actually playing, that this team can make life miserable for the contenders over the next two months.
Not exactly on cue, the Braves went out and lost three games by the aggregate score of 25-6 to the worst team in the majors. Which goes to show that brave words — no pun intended — can pale alongside reality.
By trading five key contributors (not to mention a highly regarded prospect), the Braves have done what we figured they’d do. They’ve told everyone that the final two months of the 2015 season are of lesser importance than the next several years. This is not a criticism. There was no percentage in seeing if this team could bleed out 79 wins.
The Braves as constituted hung tough for longer than they should have, but by the All-Star break they’d begun to go the way of earnest-but-mediocre teams. The two deadline deals were intended to enable future Braves teams be something more than mediocre. Trouble is, the 2015 club still has work to do.
The Braves arrived at Turner Field on Monday with 57 games remaining, or 35 percent of their season. They’d lost 16 of 21 since July 7, eight of 10 since they sent Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe to the Mets and three of four since shipping — deep breath here — Alex Wood, Jim Johnson, Luis Avilan, Jose Peraza and Bronson Arroyo’s contract to the Dodgers. By organizational design, they’ve gone from mediocre to downright bad.
If there’s a blessing, it’s that such a doomed-to-lose fate hasn’t befallen many Braves teams over the past quarter-century. Only once since the worst-to-first of 1991 has this club been deadline sellers, and that was only to shed the free-agent-to-be Mark Teixeira in July 2008. (Had they not traded for Teixeira in July 2007, the history of this franchise might be different.)
Still, knowing this is an anomaly does little to salve the sting if you’re among the 25 still playing for the Braves. “It’s going to be tough,” A.J. Pierzynski said Monday, and at 38 the catcher has seen all manner of teams. “But we do have a lot of young guys who are fighting and playing the right way.”
Said Freddie Freeman, the first baseman: “We’re professionals. We’re paid to perform. Until there’s an ‘X’ by our name (in the standings to signify elimination), we’re going to keep battling. We can’t control who’s still here, but we can control who’s on that lineup card. And if we prove we can get close, maybe they’ll get us some more help.”
Then: “It’s definitely tough, especially when you’ve been battling with these guys all along.”
Yes, this is boilerplate ballplayer stuff. But what’s a professional athlete to say: “If we win 10 more games, it’ll be a bigger miracle than the ‘69 Mets”? All these guys can do is keep trying.
Some of it might actually be entertaining. “When you’ve got a rotation like ours,” said Gonzalez, speaking of his five starting pitchers, the oldest of whom is 24, “you come to the park thinking, ‘This could be fun.’ “
It could. It could also be … well, what’s the opposite of fun? Excruciating?
The erudite Pete Van Wieren used to tell listeners that, with a promising young pitcher, one of every three starts would be good, one so-so and one awful. We saw a bit of the latter last week, when Williams Perez (age 22) yielded nine earned runs in 4 1/3 innings a night before Matt Wisler (age 22) was touched for seven in 4 2/3. And it’s not as if the Braves’ hitters are knocking down any fences: They’ve averaged 2.4 runs since the All-Star break.
Freeman again: “We can’t control what the Two Johns (Hart, the president of baseball operations, and Coppolella, assistant general manager) are doing up there. We can only control what we do. And at the end of the day, if you can look yourself in the mirror, you’ve done your job.”
All the Braves who remain can do is keep trying. Good luck with that.
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