Nobody knew what would happen in Round 1, there having been no Round 1 quite like it. What was delivered will stand as a cautionary tale for postseasons of the future: If you’re a good team and you plan to stick around, get yourself a bye.
The lesser seed won three of the four series. With no series featuring a change of venue, the road team won six of nine games. The only home club that advanced – Cleveland – scored three runs over 24 innings.
Gone are the Blue Jays, who won 92 games; the Cardinals, who won 93, and our pals the Mets, who won 101. Still going: The Phillies, who lost 13 of their final 20 regular-season games, and the Padres, who won 22 fewer games than the Dodgers, their next opponent.
In the cold light of hindsight, the Mets were broken over their weekend in Atlanta. Needing to win just once here to position themselves to clinch the East against the 100-loss Nationals, they spit the bit. Max Fried beat Jacob deGrom. Kyle Wright beat Max Scherzer. Chris Bassitt was gone in the third inning of his start. The big-name Mets pitchers got outpitched. Something similar happened in Round 1.
Against the Padres in the Wild Card series, Scherzer, who’s 38, yielded seven runs and four homers. DeGrom held up his end. Bassitt could not. The Mets trailed 2-0 after two innings Sunday night, 3-0 after four. They managed one hit against Joe Musgrove and two relievers. Timmy Trumpet’s team was reduced to having an umpire inspect Musgrove’s, er, ear for a foreign substance. (Ear wax, maybe?)
For another team, we might have felt a pang of pity. For the Mets, there was only the usual glee. They really can mess up anything.
The Braves will face Philadelphia in the NLDS. They were 11-8 against Philly this year, 5-2 in September. A best-of-five is seldom easy, but it’s not as perilous as a best-of-three, wherein one loss turns everything into an elimination game.
Example: The Cardinals carried a 2-0 lead into the ninth inning of Game 1 against the Phillies. They yielded six runs and were done. They didn’t score in Game 2. We’ve been saying since the All-Star break that the team to avoid in Round 1 was the one with Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. This was why.
Here’s also why it was better to skip Round 1 altogether. You save your pitchers for Round 2. Wheeler won’t go until Game 2 against the Braves; Ranger Suarez, who’s no slouch, will start Game 1. The Braves won’t see Nola until Friday’s Game 3. There being only one scheduled off-day, a Game 5 start for Wheeler would come on three days’ rest. Fried could start Game 5 on four days’ rest.
The Braves’ bullpen finished fourth in the majors in ERA; the Phillies’ relievers were 23rd. Fielding independent pitching (FIP) shows a smaller divide – Braves third, Phillies 12th. The bullpen has long been a source of angst for Philly fans. So has defense. The Phillies weren’t quite as a bad at catching the ball as was feared, but they were 25th in defensive runs saved. The Braves were 11th.
Anything can happen in the playoffs. According to FanGraphs, no team – not even the Dodgers – has even a 60%t chance of winning Round 2. The Braves are given a 54% chance of beating the Phillies; L.A. is afforded a 53.6% chance of beating San Diego. This isn’t football. This is a sport of narrow margins. An 88-win team – a team we came to know rather well – is the reigning World Series champ.
These Phillies won 87 games. As happened with the just-happy-to-be-there Braves last October, Philly is playing with house money. Over 162 games, though, the 2022 Braves were better at everything than Philadelphia. They should win in four.
The above is part of a regular exercise, written and collated by yours truly, available to all who register on AJC.com for our free Sports Daily newsletter. The full Bradley’s Buzz, which includes more opinions and extras like a weekly poll, arrives via email around 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We’d be obliged if you’d give it a try.
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