Brad Brach, amid an underwhelming season plunging into the abyss, got the jolt he needed.
The Braves acquired Brach from the Orioles on July 30, one of a flurry of bullpen moves before the trade deadline to address the team’s primary weakness. They traded international slot money and now that slot helped them patch a leaky bullpen.
Brach was part of the Orioles’ fire sale. He’s 32, an impending free agent and served little purpose on a historically dreadful club.
And he knew it.
“When you’re 40 games under .500, it’s really hard to go out there and try to win every game,” Brach said. “It’s a tough mentality. Because even when you win, you’re 39 games under .500 as opposed to 41 games if you lose.
“It’s one of those things where you’re playing for individual numbers. But when you come over here, it’s all about the team. It’s not that it’s not about the team over there, it’s just when you come here, every game means so much. You just can’t afford to blow a lead.”
The Orioles made the playoffs in 2014 and 2016, with Brach among their most reliable arms. He earned a 2.96 ERA with 411 strikeouts in 346 appearances from 2012-17, including an all-star berth in 2016.
Like everything else with this year’s Orioles, Brach went wrong. He had a 10.80 ERA in July, having allowed 10 earned runs in 6-2/3 innings prior to the trade. He had a 4.85 ERA in 39 innings with the Orioles.
“Looking back at those years, ’14 and ’16, they were really good years,” he said. “That’s something you never forget. The playoffs, that’s something you use the rest of your career. It feels like it was a long time ago but at the same time, it feels like it was yesterday.”
Brach’s pitched three times with the Braves, striking out two in his first pair of scoreless innings before tossing another scoreless frame in the seventh inning of Sunday’s finale in New York. He registered eighth-inning holds in his first two appearances, and already the Braves see the importance he could play bridging the path to A.J. Minter.
“It’s good to be on a winning team again, to go out there and pitch meaningful innings,” Brach said. “It’s a totally different feel. I’m starting to get that adrenaline rush back and it feels really good.”
Players and coaches insist there’s truth in rejuvenation when a player is shipped from a disastrous situation to a meaningful one. For the past several years, the Braves could be viewed as the former, at least in the players’ immediate-present mind.
Braves manager Brian Snitker saw Brach’s situation as such, as did general manager Alex Anthopoulos. The “get out of the American League East” narrative is also there, but Brach proved he could be a top-tier reliever in that division.
It was just about experiencing a pennant race again. The Braves aren’t too dissimilar from the rebuilding Orioles with which Brach grew up.
“I think so,” Snitker said of Brach feeling refreshed. “These guys are pros. You get into situations like that, a change of league might help him, a fresh start with an 0-0 record and 0.00 ERA.”
Brach felt a different vibe from the moment he entered the Braves clubhouse. That’s not to criticize his former team or club, whom he spoke extremely highly about, but there’s a noticeable change in mindset when one gets that needed changed perspective.
“Just the whole attitude of the club here is totally different,” Brach said. He has a new sense of responsibility, a familiar one to those distant Orioles teams. If the Braves make the postseason, their Brach addition probably went a long way.
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