The rebuilding Braves hope to establish momentum early and give fans reason to come out other than concession-food gluttony and the likly midseason callup of some dynamic prospects. But baseball’s schedule-makers clearly didn’t care a bit about those hopes.
The Braves, who open the season at home Monday (4 p.m.) against Washington, have an early schedule rated the most difficult in the National League by ESPN’s Buster Olney. It starts with a homestand against the Nationals and Cardinals followed immediately by a four-game road trip to Washington, where the Braves were 0-10 last season.
Go get ‘em, boys.
“We definitely do have a tough April,” Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We’ve got a lot of teams that are playoff-potential every year. So we’re going to get tested early. Usually in April if you can play .500 baseball you’re in a pretty good spot, and definitely with our schedule it’s going to be big for us to at least play .500 baseball.”
The Braves surprised just about everyone by going 42-42 last season through July 7. It would be not just surprising, but shocking, if they managed a similar start this season, with 28 of their first 41 games coming against teams that finished .500 or better in 2014.
There will be plenty of scrutiny for manager Fredi Gonzalez, in the final year of his contract. No one expects miracles and realistically even a winning season would be a major achievement with a team in the midst of a rebuild, with a bottom-five payroll. The Braves’ moves have been designed toward truly competing again in 2017.
But Braves decision-makers want to see improvement from young players in 2016, and they’ll want to see a team that plays hard and exciting baseball, to motivate fans in the final season at Turner Field and help sell season tickets for the first year at the ballpark rising at the busy intersection of interstates 285 and 75.
That early schedule doesn’t do Gonzalez and his team any favors.
“I looked at it, but I really haven’t paid much attention to it,” Gonzalez said. “You’ve got to play the schedule out. Yeah, you start off with Washington and St. Louis, then go to Washington, New York…. But I don’t pay much attention to it. If we pitch, we’ll stay in games. But we’re going to have to pitch, no ifs, ands, buts are maybes. We’re going to have to pitch.”
By mid-May the Braves will already have played two series against the NL pennant-winning Mets and road series against the Kansas City Royals, who won the World Series in 2015, and the Chicago Cubs, the team many pick to win it in 2016.
By mid-June the Braves will have played two series against the Cubs and one apiece against the Giants and Dodgers, the latter in a six-game road trip to Los Angeles and San Diego. Recent West Coast trips have been nightmarish for Atlanta.
“Yeah, we do (have a tough schedule),” right fielder Nick Markakis said. “But when it’s all said and done, we’ve got to play all the teams. Whether we play them early or late, it really doesn’t matter. We’ve got to run into them at some point.”
They don’t face the Royals most years, and the Braves get them as defending champions. They don’t normally play the Cubs twice before the midpoint, and do this year against perhaps the best team the Cubs have had in generations.
The Braves also have four April games against the Red Sox, picked by some to win the AL East. The second of back-to-back series against them is at Boston April 27-28 and starts a 10-games trip to Boston, Chicago and New York.
Veteran catcher A.J. Pierzynski thinks having so many young players and newcomers could help the Braves in their early season gauntlet of a schedule.
“A lot of the young guys don’t know anything about half these guys they’re facing,” he said. “I mean, they’ve heard their names, that’s about it. I haven’t really gotten past our first road trip, but there’s a lot of teams on our schedule that are supposed to be really good. But we’ve got to play them at some point, so we might as well get them out of the way.”
The Braves swept a season-opening series at Miami in 2015 and won their first five. They had a .500 record past the halfway point of the season before the bottom fell out in the form of injuries, slumps and trades, while the offense sputtered and the stressed pitching staff buckled.
After posting a 3.90 ERA in the 42-42 start, the Braves were 25-53 with a 4.97 ERA the rest of the way.
They scored 573 runs each of the past two seasons, which ranked 29th in the majors in 2014 and dead last in 2015. They hit just 100 homers, 20 below the Marlins’ next-lowest total. With the additions of top-of-the-order hitters Ender Inciarte and Erick Aybar and a healthy Freeman, the Braves believe they’ll have an improved offense.
“I think we’re going to be able to grind, compete, have good at-bats,” hitting coach Kevin Seitzer said. “I really like the strides everybody’s made through the spring. We’re going to have to score some runs. We’re going to have to do better than we did last year, for sure.”
