It’s understandable why so many Braves fans would have a fatalistic view of Octobers. When a franchise wins one World Series in 48 years, despite a long run of division dominance and a line of inevitable Hall of Famers on the pitching mound, belief is going to fray around the edges.
The bar for this team changed a long time ago. It’s not enough to win division titles. It’s not enough to win 90 games. It long ago became about winning one game — the last one.
That’s where the Braves are, and that’s where Fredi Gonzalez is. It’s the baggage he inherited, an unfortunate reality, even as the team was celebrating its first division title since 2005 and Gonzalez was becoming the fourth Braves manager with a division flag.
It will be lost to Gonzalez detractors that the Braves might not have made it to the postseason without him. This has been his best season in his short tenure in Atlanta. The mess he and the Braves were forced to navigate through would’ve buried most teams and managers.
But we know how it works in athletics. Teams and individuals are judged by championships, not journeys.
General manager Frank Wren, alluding to the Braves’ past October failures, conceded: “It’s been the topic of conversation around here for a long time. Unfortunately, so many folks don’t realize how hard it is to get here. It’s hard to win a division. It’s hard to make the playoffs. Then when you get here, one team gets hot and has a chance to win it very quickly.”
It’s not wrong that championships are the ultimate measuring stick for teams. But athletes, coaches and managers often get lumped into that debate too quickly. Athletes can only do their part. Coaches and managers can only play the hand they’re dealt.
Gonzalez’s hand this season: Not great.
The Braves had 23 players on the disabled list, including their catalyst, Jason Heyward, twice for improbable reasons: an appendectomy (22 games lost) and a broken jaw after getting drilled in the face by a fastball (26 games lost).
Six players were lost to season-ending surgeries, including veteran starting pitcher Tim Hudson and two key relievers, Eric O’Flaherty and Jonny Venters.
Every team has injuries. Every postseason team has had to overcome something. But not every team has its two highest-paid players, Dan Uggla and B.J. Upton, each hitting in the .180s. Gonzalez has tried them everywhere in the lineup. Also on the bench. Uggla missed time to get laser eye surgery, hoping that would solve his problems (it hasn’t).
Imagine being in the position of having to finalize a playoff roster with your 25 best players and not being certain if the two guys who each make more than $13 million should be included.
Not every winning manager has a roster that was hitting .249 going into the season’s final week, that ranked 20th in the majors and worse than any other team in the playoff field except Pittsburgh (.245).
Gonzalez tried eight different players hitting in the leadoff position. He tried 12 in the No. 2 spot. He tried 115 different batting orders (no single one more than 11 times). Why? Because this is a flawed roster. Wren built it heavy on power (and strikeouts) and low on high-percentage hitters.
Gonzalez finally was forced to try something he wanted to avoid: He put Heyward at the top of the order. Heyward took off, hitting .349 with 23 runs scored in 22 games. The Braves took off, winning 14 consecutive games beginning in late July, taking the suspense out of the National League East race.
It has been the kind of season where few have ever felt comfortable. When I asked Wren for a few minutes a week ago, he asked if we could put this interview off until after the division was clinched. Even if the numbers had long suggested the race was over, there was a sense of tempting fate.
“Even when we’ve had big leads this season, it seemed every other week that something else was happening,” Wren said. “Fredi and I would talk about it all the time. You just didn’t know if the next thing would be the straw that would make it all come crumbling down. We had 10-game leads, a 15-game lead, and it felt like we were trailing by two or three.”
How has Gonzalez handled it all?
“Really well,” Wren said. “It’s one of those jobs that the longer you do it, the more you learn about your players, about situations and the importance of each series.”
Gonzalez appeared to get emotional in the team’s dugout at Wrigley Field on Sept. 22 when it was learned Washington had lost to Florida, thereby clinching the division for the Braves. “I told (coach) Carlos (Tosca) I didn’t know whether to smile or cry,” he said later.
Like Bobby Cox, his mentor, Gonzalez kept the focus on his players, not himself.
“This might be the best group of guys, in terms of resiliency,” he said.
Gonzalez hasn’t been universally embraced by the fan base. Some viewed him as the convenient hire but not necessarily the correct one after Cox’s retirement. The Braves going 9-18 in September 2011 to blow a playoff spot only added fuel to that thesis.
Wren points out that Gonzalez “has won more games than any other manager in the league” in his three years. Correct. But the past two seasons have yielded one Wild Card game and no wins. The World Series was won by teams in San Francisco and St. Louis. For many, that’s the only statistic that matters.
Gonzalez will be judged by some on his October record, even though without him there might not be an October in Atlanta.
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