No team looks good when losing six in a row, but the cold truth is that the Braves haven’t looked very good since April. It’s August. School — at least in Cobb County, their future home — is again in session. And Baseball Prospectus, which 13 days ago assessed the Braves’ chances of making the playoffs at 51.5 percent, has slashed its estimate to 36.6 percent.
The Braves awoke Monday 3 1/2 games out of first place in the National League East. They led the division by 3 1/2 games in April. Come the Fourth of July, they were still 1 1/2 games in front. Today they face the distinct possibility of falling out of realistic playoff contention before Labor Day.
Braves fans are evincing standard-issue outrage over the plunge, but we should have seen it coming. The schedule from June 23 through July 28 offered 31 games against sub-.500 opposition; the Braves, alas, could gain only a game on Washington over those five weeks. Then the Braves went to L.A. and got swept. Then they were swept by a once-puny San Diego team that looked robust alongside the punchless visitors.
And now it gets tough. For the next 20 days, the Braves won’t play a team that currently holds a losing record. They face Seattle — starting with Felix Hernandez, at worst the second-best pitcher in the sport — and come home to play the first-place Nationals, the first-place Dodgers and the first-place Oakland A’s. Holy mackerel.
If the Braves are still in the playoff mix when this 19-game run ends, they’ll have a chance. (The September slate is much kinder.) That said, there’s a better chance they’ll fall to .500 — they’re 58-54 — and be all but done. They still can’t hit. The once-matchless bullpen ranks only ninth in the majors in ERA. Worst of all, the rotation that propped up this team for three months has been reduced to one great young pitcher (Julio Teheran), two good retreads (Aaron Harang and Ervin Santana) and the rookie Alex Wood.
With Mike Minor being “rested” because he, for reasons unknown, suddenly stinks, the Braves have essentially lost four starting pitchers. (Kris Medlen, Brandon Beachy and Gavin Floyd underwent elbow surgery.) That this cobbled-together rotation held fast as long as it did is one of the wonders of the age. Trouble was, the starting pitching became the best part of a team that unaccountably hasn’t been much good at much else.
Quality starts — six innings with three or fewer earned runs — tell the tale of the 2014 Braves. With 78 quality starts, the Braves lead the majors by some distance. They’ve won 58 games. Contrast this with the Giants, who have almost the same ERA (3.35) as the Braves (3.38). San Francisco starters have worked 61 quality starts; the team has won 60 games. Because their hitting has been so abominable, the Braves have left 20 winnable-by-definition games on the table.
We saw again last week, when they lost 3-2 and 2-1 to the Dodgers and 3-2 and 4-3 to the Padres, what we’d seen March 31, the day the season opened with a 2-0 loss in Milwaukee. The Braves were shut out in five of their first eight losses. With the pitching they’d gotten and the number of injuries to everyday players Washington suffered, they should have been seven games ahead on Memorial Day. Their lead was three games. By midweek they were tied.
All of which is to say: Outrage mightn’t be the appropriate response. Once the starting pitching returned to reasonable levels, the Braves were rendered ragingly ordinary. Frank Wren’s favorite indicator of a team’s worth isn’t WAR or even W’s and L’s; the general manager prefers run differential. Wren’s team has a run differential of plus-9. (The Nationals, by way of contrast, are plus-80.) According to ESPN, a team with a run differential of plus-9 should be 57-55. In that way if no other, the Braves have overachieved.
Against the Padres, we saw a proud team buckle under the weight of reality. When you can’t score, you lose faith. You try too hard. (Emilio Bonifacio, imported at the trade deadline, was doubled off second base.) You cut things too fine. (Evan Gattis didn’t score from second base on a double, if you can believe that.) You try things you shouldn’t. (Andrelton Simmons sought to bunt Gattis home from third.) You wind up hitting into 5-2-3 double plays on consecutive days with the bases loaded.
It’s not impossible that the Braves could rally themselves. In 2004 the Red Sox were three outs from being swept in the ALCS and were facing the greatest closer ever. They won that night and won every game thereafter and broke the Curse of the Bambino. Strange things do happen in baseball. That said, it would be most strange if these mediocre Braves contrive to play beyond September.
