The season began with us asking if the Braves or Dodgers would be baseball’s best team. Today we wonder if the Braves can hold off the Mets for the honor of being the National League’s third-best wild card.
It is not, we stipulate, the most heated of chases. Here’s how the Braves’ August has gone: They split four games with one of the league’s two worst teams, were swept at home by the aggregate score of 34-12 and just contrived to drop a road series against the NL’s other bottom-dweller. Not to be outdone, the Mets were outscored 22-1 over three nights in Seattle.
The Braves now face four games against the Giants, who were below .500 six days ago. That they’ve drawn within 1-1/2 games of the third wild card tells us all we need know about the third wild card. Some team will claim it. That team could still be the Braves, 42-49 since April 28.
For 20 hours, it was possible to believe a season gone wrong might have turned. After 3-1/2 months of not hitting, the Braves scored in double figures for the first time since March 30. Matt Olson hit a grand slam to put them ahead. Then he hit a two-run homer to put them ahead again, this time to stay. Olson hasn’t been the only Brave to underperform, but he’s the one making the most money.
On Sunday, the Braves carried an 8-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth. Jorge Soler, 4-for-24 with one RBI over his first seven games since being reacquired, hit his third and fourth homers of the weekend. Luke Jackson, a ride-along in the deal that brought Soler from the Giants, took the ball with six outs to go. What happened next wasn’t without precedent, though it was close.
Mike Axisa of CBS Sports reports that, before Sunday, Colorado had rallied to win when trailing by six in the eighth only once in its history. (The Rockies began play in 1993.) Jackson yielded a two-run homer to Jake Cave, but the Braves still held a four-run lead with four outs to go and nobody aboard. Two more hits brought Joe Jimenez. Four more hits and the Braves were behind.
From Axisa: “The Rockies are now 2-725 – 2-725! – when trailing by six or more runs in the eighth inning or later.”
From Braves manager Brian Snitker: “That was even weird for here.”
“Here” was Coors Field, the place where every team – even these Braves! – makes like the ‘27 Yankees. But now, after a weekend that saw this club amass 24 runs on 36 hits, we wonder if most of that was due to altitude. We note that five of Soler’s past six homers have come in Denver; all six were against Rockies pitching. We note that the Braves, hitting like they haven’t all season, still lost two of three.
Over this latest run of division titles, the Braves have carried themselves the way serial winners do. When you win that much, you expect to win. These Braves are inventing ways to lose. This blown lead and that Thursday in Queens with the messed-up squeeze and the misplayed fly ball are egregious cases, but not since April has this team seemed itself.
Since the All-Star break, the Braves have won one of seven series. At the break, they led St. Louis by 3-1/2 games for the first wild card. Today they’re four games behind Arizona and San Diego for the first and second wild cards. They’re a half-game up on the Mets, who have lost six of nine.
The Braves have MLB’s 14th-best record. They’re 14th in run differential. They’re 18th in non-pitching WAR, and now the pitching has begun to buckle. Braves opponents have scored 64 runs over the past seven games, only three of which were staged in Colorado.
Minus Ronald Acuna and Spencer Strider, this was never going to be a great team. As is, it mightn’t be a good one. That’s not to suggest the Braves can’t eke out a wild card – they’re on track for 84 wins, which was all it took last year – and anything goes in October.
I’d be lying if I said I know where these Braves will wind up. I’d also be lying if I said I ever imagined them looking like this.
