We think of tanking as giving up, which it is, but we also think of it as cowardly, which it isn’t. On the contrary: It takes guts to trot out a product as wretched as the 2015 Braves have become.
They lost again Wednesday, marking their 15th defeat in 16 games and their eighth consecutive loss at home. Not since the 1988 Braves opened their season 0-9 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium had the latter happened. When you’re citing a 106-loss team as a precedent, you’re scraping the absolute bottom.
A mini-miracle occurred Wednesday: The Braves took their first lead in a calendar week (and 50 innings) by nosing ahead 3-2 in the third on a rally that included an infield hit, two walks, a hit batter, a missed tag and a seeing-eye RBI single by the heralded Hector Olivera.
Duly buoyed, the Braves held their advantage for three batters in the top of the fourth. They wouldn’t muster another run. They were outscored 18-4 and outhit 35-16 in the series by the Marlins, who lost the first three games of a four-game set here in early July and appeared the dregs of baseball. On Aug. 8, Miami was eight games behind the Braves. On the second day of September, the Fish nosed a half-game ahead.
Even if this is awfulness by design, it’s still awful. Losing by design is still losing, and losing always hurts. A half-hour after Wednesday’s game, assistant general manager John Coppolella — one of the two architects of this tear-down-to-build-up project — stood in Fredi Gonzalez’s office and said: “This is going to lead to better things.”
It takes a brave exec to make such a statement in front of the manager who’s watching his team get overwhelmed on a daily basis. (Of his team taking an actual lead, Gonzalez spoke of the previous series and said: “I think the best we did against the Yankees was 0-0 in the second.” And he was correct.) But say this for the Braves: They’re emboldened by their vision. They are committed to their path, treacherous as it is.
And yet: Tearing down is the easier part by far. We laud Coppolella and John Hart for their skill in acquiring young pitchers and draft picks and Olivera, but here’s no guarantee these machinations will yield a winning big-league club. When you get this bad, a lot has to go right for you to get good again. The Royals went 29 years between postseason appearances; the Pirates went 21 years between winning seasons.
This much must be said: The more we’ve seen of the young starting pitchers the Braves keep bringing to the majors, the more we wonder about each. (Shelby Miller excluded.) Mike Foltynewicz throws hard but straight and seems destined to be a closer. Matt Wisler doesn’t strike out many guys. Williams Perez will do well to hold a job at the back end of a bad rotation. Manny Banuelos hasn’t made it through six innings of any start; on Tuesday, he didn’t make it through three.
There are more and presumably better arms in the minors: Tyrell Jenkins, Touki Toussaint, Max Fried, Ricardo Sanchez, Kolby Allard, Mike Soroka, Lucas Sims. But how many project as No. 1 starters, or even No. 3s? Last month an anonymous National League executive told Jerry Crasnick of ESPN: “I really do like the strategy, and I do think they’re doing the right thing.” But the same man wondered if, beyond Miller, the Braves had accumulated a “bunch of No. 4 starters or bullpen guys.”
That’s the worst-case scenario — when getting bad on purpose gives way to staying bad by accident. It’s way too early to make a definitive call on that; it’ll be way too early a year from now. Still, we note that the Braves are much worse at hitting than at pitching (though they’re not good at either), and the only big bat on the horizon is Olivera, who’ll turn 31 in April. There are those in baseball who believe that, in the post-steroid era, hitters peak at 32.
Whatever happens in the months ahead, it can be no sadder than this. “We knew this could happen,” Gonzalez said, and so it has. In pointing toward brighter tomorrows, the Braves have become the worst team in baseball.
