MIAMI – After having six scheduled off days and two rainouts in the first 5 1/2 weeks of the season, including days off Tuesday and Thursday, the Braves actually welcomed a stretch of 20 consecutive games beginning Friday with no scheduled day off again until June 1.
After the disappointing 11-20 start to their season before Friday, the Braves would welcome anything that might possibly help them get on the right track again.
“You probably couldn’t put together a schedule any worse than what we had up till now, if you want to get right down to it,” said manager Brian Snitker, whose team had just one homestand – seven games – in April. “With the off days, just the whole thing, it wasn’t easy to navigate it. But there’s been a lot of people going through it, so it’s not just us. But you’d like to have a few off days spread out as you go.
“I kind of like that when every day is just the same thing. It’s kind of what we do, and just playing every day will be good. That’ll be a good opportunity to get something going.”
Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman was asked about the three-game series that began Friday night at Marlins Park, where the Braves were a majors-best 32-15 since the stadium opened in 2012 including 7-3 since the beginning of last season.
“We’ve obviously played well here in the last couple of years,” Freeman said. “We’ll take anything, any positive we can take to start playing well and hopefully just a little confidence of being in this park helps us out. We’ll take it.”
The Braves snapped a string of 53 consecutive innings without having a lead on Wednesday when Freeman and Adonis Garcia homered in the fourth inning for a 2-1 lead over the Astros. But Jaime Garcia gave up three runs the next inning and the Braves lost, 4-2, their sixth consecutive defeat and eighth in nine games.
In the opener of that two-game series at Houston, the Braves played the Astros even after the first inning – but that was after Bartolo Colon gave up five runs in the opening inning. Not hardly a moral victory, and at this point the Braves aren’t interested in moral victories anyway. Or in just playing consistently.
“There comes a point where you’ve got to start winning ball games,” veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki said. “You don’t want to keep saying you’ve got to find consistency, and the next thing you know you’re 15 games out. You want to start winning ball games, find ways to win even when you’re not consistent. That’s kind of how you get to the playoffs and get to be that team.
“We do have time, but like I said, at the same time you do want to win some ball games and you want to win now.”
Freeman said despite the mounting losses, their remained optimism in the clubhouse. This is basically the same team of position players and, on paper, a better pitching staff than on the Braves team that won 20 of its final 30 games in 2016 and ranked among the league’s top offenses after the All-Star break.
“We have the same offense as we did last year,” Freeman said. “And obviously we’re not going to keep pitching like the way we have been. We all know that they’re all going to figure it out. And for us (position players), we’ve got to hopefully be hitting when they figure it out. It’s like I said a couple of days ago, when we hit, we don’t pitch. And when we pitch, we don’t hit. I think when they start pitching hopefully we’re there to back them up, because I know they’re doing everything they can, and we’re doing everything we can, to get ourselves on a winning streak here.
“If that happens (Friday) — hopefully it does, hopefully (starter Mike Foltynewicz) goes out and pitches like he did the first few starts. Hopefully with the bigger ballpark (Marlins Park), some of those balls that would go out don’t go out here and get caught and we can put a little run together. Because we definitely need to. Being nine games under is not the way you want to go into mid-May.”
