It was a great night in Chicago for our Braves.  Three two-run home runs from the sixth inning on, by RAJ, Ozzie, and Baldwin, overcame as 3-0 deficit and gave the Braves a 6-3 victory.

It didn’t look so great after five innings.  The Braves only managed two baserunners in five innings vs. Kevin Gausman, singles by Olson in the first and Dubon in the fifth.  Meanwhile, Martin Perez had surrendered a run in the second and two more in the fourth (albeit one of the latter two was unearned due to a throwing error by Dubon). 

Over much of the past month or two, commenters on this site have gone back and forth as to which is the bigger concern heading into the postseason, the offense or the pitching.  Around the time of the trade deadline, many were distressed that AA had not acquired a top-tier starter of two to follow Chris Sale in a postseason series.  And over the last month, the vaunted bullpen has shown cracks, with Iggy turning in many shaky outings, the once reliable Dylan Lee seeming to fall apart, and Robert Suarez’s return continuing to be over the horizon.

At the same time, many have come around to Roger’s view that the offense is a bigger problem than the pitching.  As several have noted, four guys are mostly solid (Olson, Baldwin, RAJ, and MHII) but the OPS+ of everyone else in the lineup sits below 100.

At the end of the fifth, with the Braves down 3-0, with no signs of life on offense, I pondered whether offense or pitching is the bigger concern. I concluded ¿Por qué no los dos?

But then the team proved once again why predictions are hard.  In the sixth, Baldwin stroked a solid single and Acuña followed with a laser shot to the left field bleachers. Hope returns!  It’s a one run game.  Over the past month, Ronald has been the Ronald we all expect.  Over that same month, Albies has been pretty dreadful.  But in the seventh, following a Riley walk, Ozzie crushed one deep into the right field seats.  Braves lead 4-3!

Meanwhile, Perez righted the ship, turning in six solid innings, holding them scoreless in the fifth and sixth.  When Ozzie’s blast gave the Braves the lead, the announcers pointed out that Perez was in line for his 100th career victory.  At the time, I thought such talk was premature, and possibly a jinx.  A one run lead with nine outs to get, against one of the best offenses in baseball, was hardly a sure thing.  No problem.  Didier Fuentes pitched a perfect seventh and returned to do the same in the eighth.  Still, given Iggy’s recent wobbles, you had to be anxious.  So Drake Baldwin eased those concerns by hitting a two run homer of his own in the ninth, making it 6-3.  No need to worry anyway.  Iglesias got them 1-2-3 in the 9th to complete the win.  It is a nice touch on a great story that Martin Perez did indeed get his 100th MLB win.

Earl Weaver was right about three-run homers, but multiple two-run shots aren’t a bad substitute.

With the Phils losing to the Nationals, the division lead is up to 5.5 and the magic number is just 5.

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The playoffs are not really a crapshoot; the results are not random. Some teams have better chances of winning it all than do others. It’s more like shooting craps with loaded dice.

But it’s baseball!  The results are more unpredictable than other major sports.  The die may be loaded, but not as much as most of us want to think.  The Dodgers, who have far and away the best odds of winning the World Series, have a better than a 70% chance of not winning it all. 

Can the Braves win it all this year?  Of course they can!  Are they likely to?  Of course not!  But then no one else is likely to win it either, if by likely you mean probable.

The 2023 Braves had, by many measures, the most prolific offense in baseball history.  Do you realize that the 2023 team OPS of 126 was higher than any individual Brave this season?  They slugged .500 as a team!  Then they scored 8 runs in 4 games against the Phillies. 

Some of us like to say good pitching in the playoffs will shut down even the best offense.  Sometimes it does.  But other times the most unlikely hitters come through in big moments—and the best pitchers make a mistake or two costing their team a game.  October baseball is coming for the Braves.  I’m going to do my best to avoid predictions and enjoy the unpredictability.  But I will say this.  If the Braves want to go deep into this postseason, my advice is to repeat last night’s performance: hit multiple home runs in as many games as you can.

The Braves will try to take another step toward clinching that postseason berth tonight in Chicago, when newly recalled JR Ritchie takes the hill.  He’ll be angling for a spot on that postseason roster.  I hope he passes the audition.