The Braves are playing like a team capable of winning the World Series, which isn’t to say they’ll win the World Series. Postseason baseball defies prediction, and there’s no assurance the Braves will play this way 2 1/2 months hence. But it’s clear that these Braves make the playoffs, and it’s also clear that they have the ingredients to stick around once there.
After Washington lost in Detroit on Wednesday afternoon to fall 10 1/2 games — after the Braves beat Colorado later Wednesday, the margin swelled to 11 — out of first place, the Nationals’ Bryce Harper told reporters: “We play the Braves nine (more) games. This (expletive) ain’t over.”
Mathematically, it’s not. Realistically, the National League East race ended a while ago. Washington does play the Braves nine more times, but even if it went 9-0 it would still trail in the standings. And the Braves’ schedule is such — only seven of their final 54 games against currently plus-.500 opposition — that it’s hard to envision them tripping.
Yes, yes. The Braves collapsed in epic fashion in 2011, one year after fading almost as egregiously and needing a victory in the 162nd game to slip into the playoffs. But this team is better than those. This team is so solid that the trade deadline could pass Wednesday without the Braves making a move — they did pluck reliever Scott Downs from the Angels on Monday — and no one in the clubhouse felt disappointed.
Said manager Fredi Gonzalez: “Our team’s set. It’s a good team.”
Said general manager Frank Wren: “We’re pretty happy with our club. It’s playing as well as it has all year.”
Barely a week ago, we could ask if the Braves were as good as their record. After starting 13-2, they went 44-43. Then they swept St. Louis and scored 29 runs in three games against Colorado, and for the first time since April we saw these many and splendid components working in harmony. The starting pitching? Very good. The bullpen? Still great. The hitting? Getting there.
The clout-or-out days of spring and early summer have begun to recede. At the All-Star break, the Braves led the National League in strikeouts by 32 whiffs. As of Wednesday morning, the margin had shrunk to six. Postbreak, the Braves ranked only eighth among the 15 NL teams in K’s.
Two weeks ago, the Braves were hitting .250 as a team. They’ve hit .267 since. Rallies are being sustained. The home run no longer is the only means of attack. Brian McCann and Jason Heyward, who are capable of hitting more than homers, have gotten going. Chris Johnson leads the league in batting. Dan Uggla — yes, Dan Uggla — ranks sixth in home runs.
Some years the players themselves will whisper that a major deadline move is needed. No such talk could be heard this time. (The consensus was that a left-handed reliever would be useful, and Downs fits the bill.) Asked if this is the best Braves team of his nine seasons on the job, McCann said: “Absolutely. One hundred percent.”
Wren again: “If we can play consistently well, we’re a really good team. But playing consistently is the key. We thought in spring training we had a good team but that the 162 games would tell us if we were a really good team, a pretty good team or a great team. This last homestand, we’ve been really good.”
Good enough to win it all? “If we play like we’ve played the last week, yeah.”
But there’s the rub? As great as the Braves look, somebody else could look greater come October or simply get luckier. Not many would have tabbed the 2010 or the 2012 San Francisco Giants as champions two months out, but that’s what they became.
Wren: “If you’d asked the Giants on Aug. 1 if they thought they could win the World Series, they’d probably have said, ‘Yeah, we could, but we’ve got to be playing well at the right time.’ ”
Gonzalez: “Somebody once told me, ‘Once you get in, you could have a team that lost 100 games playing a team that won 100 games, and in a five-game series you never know.’”
How thin has the October line become? The 2012 Giants trailed Cincinnati 2-0 in the Division Series and, had the Reds pushed across a run in extra innings of Game 3, the champs-to-be would have been eliminated without winning a postseason game. Not for nothing do baseball men, with one voice, hold that the playoffs are a crap shoot.
“When you get to the playoffs, you’ve got to get some breaks,” Gonzalez said. Then this: “And you’ve got to have a hot goalie.”
As of Wednesday, the Braves have fortified themselves for the months ahead as well as any team in the majors. But it wouldn’t hurt for Wren to find his Ken Dryden.
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