In this online Bar, most of us have vented our increasing frustration with this year’s Braves team (some express that frustration more vehemently and more often than others :)).  When you begin the season with a 99% chance of making the playoffs, but see those chances inexorably diminish over the course of the season, until by mid-August you’re hanging by a thread—that is frustrating!  And just when you think the injury luck could not get worse, we learn that Austin Riley’s hand is broken and he will miss the rest of the regular season.  There are no internal options to replace him, so the season long offensive malaise is bound to deepen, and this campaign seems to be a lost cause.

So let’s reframe this race.  We need new vibes.

Would you rather pull for a talented team that underachieves, never quite living up to its potential, continually losing games they should have won?

Or would you prefer to root for a scrappy underdog team, one that faces unbelievable misfortune, but never gives up and manages to stay in the thick of a pennant race despite mountains of adversity?

I’ll speak for myself: the latter is a lot more fun.  Despite the worst injury luck of any Braves team I remember in nearly sixty years of following them, this team is still in the pennant race.  Not only do they have a 2.5 game lead for the final playoff spot, the division title is still improbably within reach. The offense can’t compare to the 2023 record-breakers, but the pitching staff is as strong as any in the game. 

Last night, the Braves defeated the division-leading Phillies 3-1.  Iin perhaps the most satisfying win of the season so far, Braves pitchers held the Phillies to a lone run.  Reynaldo Lopez, in his return from the IL, struck out ten and surrendered just one run.  Holmes, Jimenez, and Iglesias did their thing, shutting them out over the final four frames.  Meanwhile the offense managed two against their Ace Zack Wheeler, and the Philly bullpen surrendered an insurance run in the 8th (on four walks, with the rbi bases loaded base on balls by our newest castoff Gio Urshela).  The Big Bear hit a solo shot to give the Braves the lead in the 6th.  Whit Merrifield had a double, triple, and run scored. 

Neither Urshula nor Merrifield have been very good for a good long while, but they were both excellent five years ago.  Gio’s OPS in 2019 was .889, and Whit’s was .811.  Anything approaching those levels would be far better than anyone on this year’s team not named Marcell.  Perhaps there is some late career magic for them in the next few weeks.  It’s a longshot, but that’s the whole point of being underdogs, right?

Of course I’m not saying that losing Riley is a good thing. The offensive struggles may only get worse in his absence.  Maybe Urshela finds his 2019 stroke for six weeks, but I’d rather have Austin.

But still I like our chances.  If the Braves are going to make the playoffs, it will be on the strength of this excellent pitching staff.  The starters, led by Sale, Fried, and Lopez, match up with any teams’, and the bullpen is perhaps the deepest and the strongest in the league. They are going to need to win a lot more games like the one last night, scratching across runs when they can and getting the occasional long ball.

To my mind, that is the best kind of baseball—tight, low-scoring, well-pitched games, in the middle of a pennant race among several well-matched teams.  It’s not what we expected when this season started, and certainly not when those lofty expectations kept sinking. 

But a scrappy underdog in a tight pennant race is what we’ve got.  Go Dogs!  (and Go Dawgs, but that’s a story for another day.)

Tonight Max Fried tries to get back on track against the Phillies’ other ace, Aaron Nola.  I’ll take another game a lot like last night’s.