A Braves Journal Contest:
Who will have the best LCS performance?
Freddie Freeman 4/16, 1 2b, 1 HR, .896 OPS
William Contreras 2/14, .396 OPS
Luke Jackson 2.0 IP, 1.5 WHIP, 4.50 ERA, 0 BB, 1 K
Kevin Gausman 12 1/3 IP, 1.054 WHIP, 2.19 ERA, 7 BB, 9 K
I think Gausman is the winner here, even if you ignore the fact that he was the “winning pitcher” of Game 7. Honorable mention to Luke Jackson, who had the good sense not to be called on to pitch in Game 7.
oldtimer and kip JC’d:
from oldtimer:
Couple Battery questions for you guys, my friends and I hit a city every year to catch a game, next year could be Atlanta.
1. Is the Battery a cool place to stay for a couple nights or meh?
2. if not, any areas of Atlanta you would recommend a hotel/airbnb to hang out in, walkable, yet easy to get to the game?
3. We have hot Boston(meh) Pitt, Cleveland, Milwaukee all đź‘Ť . Philly many tomes, DC and Baltimore too.
Thanks
from kip:
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2025-mlb-farm-system-statcast-pitching-rankings/
Many were surprised the Braves let Paul Davis go, but I wonder if this had anything to do with it?
Kevin Seitzer has the Mariners mashing and they’re two games away from the AL pennant.
Freddie Freeman put the Dodgers on top with a solo shot in Milwaukee.
The evolution from “Braves fan” to “baseball fan who follows the Braves” is well underway.
Orlando Arcia, Ozzie Albies, and Michael Harris would end the career of many a hitting coach. I’m not sure you can teach a man not to swing at every pitch.
Re: The Battery
Caveat: I’m a bit of a killjoy when it comes to the Truist Park experience. The ballpark is just fine & The Battery has way more immediate pre- and post-game options than Turner Field ever had, but getting there, parking there, leaving there, etc., isn’t my cup of tea. And if you wanna leave via Uber, be prepared to wait longer than you will at any airport.
Never stayed at the hotel there, but The Battery is a bit like a sanitized New Orleans Bourbon Street/Las Vegas Freemont Street Experience… lotsa food, lotsa booze, lotsa outdoor cover bands, lotsa stumbling folks clutching & spilling drinks. Can be fun, depending on your tolerance.
If you’re into it, you might as well stay there b/c that part of BravesLand is all about driving.
Thanks and thats the impression I get while searching it up. It doesnt look like a “fun” area to spend a few nights as 50 year olds.
Dodgers are firmly in the drivers seat to another title. I don’t see Seattle topping this team, but maybe. Freddie Freeman ended up in a great situation and will probably have a Dodgers hat on his plaque in Cooperstown. Meanwhile, I’m deeply pessimistic about this front office and ownership’s commitment to actually investing into the roster outside of cheap extensions and marginal free agent signings. If this team is successful to any extent in 2026, I feel like it will be in spite of the front office. And, with a work stoppage looming in 2027, I am skeptical that there will be any appetite to spend much this winter.
Yes, I’m kind of burnt out on this front office and ownership group.
While I prefer the other three teams still in the playoffs – I’d love the Mariners or Brewers to win their first championship ever, and I think it would be cool for the Blue Jays to win their first in over three decades – I can’t bring myself to hate any of them. The Dodgers did exactly what I wish the Braves would do: they hired boatloads of incredibly talented scouts and player development personnel in the front office and built an incredible farm system, and then they spent tons of money on great free agents. I feel the same way about the Phillies, honestly: they spend money because they want to win, and bless them for it.
The Jays and Brewers have obviously looked pretty flatfooted at first, but I’d love to see them make a true series of it.
We could get away without spending all the money on free agents if we had a better scouting/development department. The investment required for that is orders of magnitude lower, and it’s insanity that we wouldn’t do it.
I’ve went from being annoyed and repulsed by the Dodgers to respecting the hustle. They want to win and they do what it takes. The Braves – if they didn’t operate as a REIT – could have a $300M payroll.
I’m cheering for one of the other three teams, but I’m not going to be upset if the Dodgers curb stomp the AL winner.
Dodgers are the gold standard of how to run an organization.
But the Dodgers’ success doesn’t diminish the Braves any. Anthopolous has as many rings as Scheuerholz does. He’s drafted nine major leaguers who are still on the team (Michael Harris II, Spencer Strider, Bryce Elder, Spencer Schwellenbach, Dylan Dodd, AJ Smith-Shawver, Drake Baldwin, Nacho Alvarez, Hurston Waldrep) and many more who are on other teams.
The only move that irked me was letting Seitzer go. Scapegoats gonna scapegoat. IIRC the pitching staff was refusing to throw to all-star William. I’m happy he’s succeeding in Milwaukee. But it wasn’t going to happen here.
I’m also bothered than Liberty has separated their Battery operation from the team. That stinks to high heaven. But I think the regime handling on-field stuff is plenty capable.
I feel confident that the Braves will make the postseason next year. And it’s anyone’s game at that point.
I pull for ex-Braves and good play. What else can an old Braves,fan do?
Ah, the logical conundrums of conventional commentary. So
(a) home crowds somehow inspire the home team to do better; thus
(b) you need to score runs to ‘neutralize the crowd’
But if (a) is true, you can’t do (b). And of course if you can do (b), (a) must not matter. And when is (b) ever a bad idea?
George Kirby grew up about 200 yards from my house. Some of these home runs, I think, are landing close to my house.
It’s like “their starting rotation is so good so you need to get ahead early and get into their bullpen”
Watching the Dodgers for the last 6 years makes 2021 look a bit miraculous.
Shoot, we almost beat them twice. If we’d just signed a real pitcher in 2020 instead of Cold Shambles we woulda
It kinda was. In 6 games, Eddie Rosario hit .560 w/ 3 HRs. Nuts.
In the past decade, the expanded playoffs have brought us champs like the Braves, the Rangers, & the Nationals.
But the 2 clubs (Astros, Dodgers) that managed to sustain through it all have won 4 titles/8 pennants.
Would love to see someone trip up the Dodgers, but they’re kinda reminding me of the 2000 Yankees… stumble thru the season with an expensive, talent-rich roster, then thrash everyone in October.
Well… that was ridiculous.
Ohtani, Freeman, and Betts will all have been underpaid significantly when all is said and done.
Outside of a radical change in posture towards spending on free agents and/or dumb luck, the idea that the Braves will ever hang with this iteration of the Dodgers is absurd.
And I won’t mention how the negligence and incompetence of this front office gifted LA a Hall of Fame first baseman to contribute to their playoff domination.
As somebody once said, it’s supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.
What Shohei Ohtani just did last night just might be, I think, the best single-game performance in American professional sports. To dominate on both sides of the ball like that hasn’t been done in a century; to do it in a postseason clincher is beyond ready comprehension.
But great teams lose short series all the damn time and we know that better than anybody. We’ve got a pretty good team. It’s time for AA to go shopping.
Restating slightly what Alex said, I agree with you, sdp, that the Dodgers are obviously a much better team than the Braves as currently constituted and probably as they will constituted next spring unde the best conceivable circumstances. The Braves are not alone in that, as the Brewers just demonstrated. What the Dodgers have done, within the rules, is create a team which really ought to be any team that ever existed in the sport.
But “ought” is not destiny. The thing I fear is that every team, not just the Braves, will sa:”well, there’s no friggin’ way I can assemble a team within shouting distance of the Dodgers, so what I’ll do is try to assemble a ^playoff* team and hope to get lucky.” If I were a GM, it’s probably what I would do, and that is sad. But if, for example, the Dodgers lose to the Mariners, the general proposition that no team is as good as they look when they’re playing well will give us all hope again east of Chavez Ravine.
Man, that’s brutal for Mariners fans. Good thing they saved their closer for the 8th inning instead of bringing him in when the game was actually on the line in the 7th. Ugh, memories of Kimbrel watching from the bullpen…
New thread: