Memorial Day marks the unofficial end of baseball’s first quarter. The Braves awoke Monday having lost four of five to slide to 21-27. They were tied with the Mets for the eighth-worst record in baseball. You couldn’t call a season that hasn’t seen the Braves above .500 for even a day a rousing success. You could, however, call it improvement.
On Memorial Day 2016, the Braves were 14-35. That was the worst record among MLB teams. They’d already fired their manager. They ranked last in most key offensive categories. Hector Olivera, for whom they’d paid a heavy price, had been arrested for domestic violence.
On that Memorial Day, the Braves were on pace to go 46-116, which would have marked the fourth-most losses of any team in the modern era. (As it happened, they finished 68-93.) On this Memorial Day, the Braves were on track to go 71-91, which would mark a 2 ½-game improvement over last season. It would not, however, qualify as success.
The 2016 Braves weren’t so much designed as thrown together. They were what was left after two offseasons of selling old and buying young. Their No. 2 starter was Bud Norris, who has never worked a complete game for any of his six big-league employers. He was gone by July. Their No. 5 starter was Jhoulys Chacin, signed in January and gone by May. Last year’s Braves finally started to hit after Matt Kemp was acquired in an out-of-character trade that has, it must be said, worked out. But not even John Coppolella entered last season thinking, “What our rebuilding team needs is a 31-year-old who makes $21 million a year.”
This year's team was crafted, albeit to a curious set of specifications. Having seen what befell Matt Wisler and Aaron Blair last season, the Braves were doubly determined not to rush young arms. Still, the move to SunTrust Park carried some obligation not to run just anybody – meaning a Norris or a Chacin – out there. The Braves settled on a pricey half-measure: They signed Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey, both on the high side of 40, and traded for Jaime Garcia, who's 30.
The hope was that they would eat enough innings not to stink out the new joint and then, come the trade deadline, be sent on their way. Alas, Colon has been throwing batting practice. Opponents are hitting .321 against him, second-worst among qualifying pitchers. Opponents are hitting .284 against Dickey. That Garcia has been pretty good must be tempered by the realization that he’s even more likely to be dealt at the deadline.
Betting on Colon/Dickey was a short-term risk that's showing why it was risky. Their collective Baseball-Reference WAR value is minus-0.9, meaning the Braves paid $20 million for less than nothing. Together they've worked seven quality starts in 20. To be fair, Dickey has been better than Colon. Being worse would have been nigh-impossible.
The upshot of this rotation's failure – and not just the over-the-hill gang; Julio Teheran's ERA is higher than Dickey's – has been a wasted opportunity. True, the Braves are tied with the Mets for second in the National League East. They're also 8 ½ games out of first place and eight back of the second wild card. As of Monday, FanGraphs assessed the Braves' playoff odds at 0.7 percent.
In some ways, the Braves calculated right. Their hitting, while not quite as robust as over the final months of last season, has been OK. (They’re 17th in runs, having scored 214. The MLB average is 225.) The bullpen ERA is 21st-best, but some of that is due to the regrettable Josh Collmenter, recently designated for assignment. With better starting pitching, there’d be reason to view these first two months as another step toward brighter tomorrows. As it stands, these two months are apt to mark the season’s apex.
The Braves must decide whether to DFA Colon, who has no trade value and, being a finesse pitcher, would be of little use in relief. If vacillating returns continue, the Braves will have to ask if Teheran is worth keeping. (They’d decided he is, but everything is subject to review.) It’s unreasonable to believe an offense without Freddie Freeman will hold up until he returns in July. That same month could see the exits of Garcia and Brandon Phillips and Matt Adams.
In the grand scheme, two more middling months won't much matter. This season was always seen as a bridge, and it's serving the purpose. They've had no young pitcher disappoint. Rio Ruiz shows signs of being an everyday third baseman. Dansby Swanson should be OK, though he has 15 errors in 83 big-league games and still isn't hitting. But only 14 of the Braves' first 48 games came against teams with winning records — the Braves were 4-10 — and they're still not sniffing .500. On the major-league level, half-measures have yielded a glass half-empty.
