I wrote the following as an email to a friend who is a Phillies fan. Bitterly philosophical at watching the same aging core of expensive veterans fail to win it all as their window continues to close, he began his email by quoting the comments he made the previous year; in those comments, he began by quoting the comments he made the previous year.

The cyclicality of it all is frustrating, a feeling with which I identify, even when (to be honest) watching it happen to the Phillies and Mets is an awful lot of fun. Anyway, he encouraged to vent my own spleen, and what follows is the result of that.

I have not edited it at all, but I will note that the below contains a dig at the team’s lack of progressivenes, a sentiment which certainly comes into contact with the border of the no-politics rule. I’ve made no secret of my willingness to say farewell to the Chop, but I have no desire to otherwise characterize or criticize the politics of anyone on the team or anyone here.

***

I’m not sure I have it in me to write a much longer postmortem, but this, I think, is where I am.

The Braves won the World Series in 2021 by drawing to an inside straight. I am not sure if a Monte Carlo simulation of the season would have brought the championship home to Atlanta five times out of 100. The conclusion, though, seems to have been the same as it was for the previous three decades: the playoffs are a crapshoot, so it isn’t worth trying to improve your odds past the *bare* minimum it takes to punch your ticket to get past the regular season.

Alex Anthopoulos has taken some big swings in the past – he traded for nearly the whole Marlins roster at one point; he brought in Tulowitzki and David Price and made two different brilliant moves to acquire Josh Donaldson. But lately, his hallmark seems to have been the moves he didn’t quite make. The Braves were frequently mentioned at this year’s deadline in the Skubal sweepstakes, and it turned out that they were much closer to a deal for Jacob DeGrom. But they didn’t quite do it. It’s probably not fair to compare AA to Farhan Zaidi, but over the past several years, he has spent a great deal more time trying to claim credit for *not* making moves when it didn’t make sense to make them, than he has spent time announcing moves that he did make.

The 2023 Braves offense was extraordinary. It was easily the team’s best offensive performance since the 2003 team. And it matched their October success by losing in the Division Series. Atlanta has now lost in 12 different Division Series and I’m honestly not sure whether any club has more LDS losses than that. The front office took the loss in stride and appears to have concluded one of two things: either 1) the loss was a fluke, and the team’s true talent would easily catapult them to better results the following season; or 2) the marginal cost of additional wins was too damn high, so doing anything more simply wasn’t worth it.

This wealthy team has made far too many moves based on perceived financial savvy, and all too often they have been penny-wise and pound-foolish. In recent years, the team spent $80 million on contracts for Jurickson Profar, Ha-Seong Kim, and Mike Yastrzemski, for reasons quite similar to the reasons that guided David Stearns in his decision to fill his hole at 1B with Jorge Polanco.

For the past couple of years, I suggested that Anthopoulos was cut off mid-stream, as it seemed as though he had made commitments to spend money that abruptly went unfulfilled, as it seemed that his higher ups may have abruptly cut his budget. At this point, I’m less interested in this particular point. Since the poor playoff showing of that star-studded 2023 team, most of the eight players it sent to the All-Star team have severely regressed, including Sean Murphy, Austin Riley, Ronald Acuña, Spencer Strider, Ozzie Albies, and Orlando Arcia (!). Perhaps it is too much to ask any executive or any team to overcome such extreme setbacks. That’s certainly the message the team would like fans to be willing to accept.

But I tend to think that the team’s emphasis on “posting,” playing every day, is a big part of the problem. Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson were the ones who really championed it, and they’re both gone, but it’s hard not to notice that Riley, Acuña, Strider, and Murphy have all suffered major injuries in the past few years, they’ve all tried to come back quickly, and they’ve all seemed to aggravate and reinjure themselves. So: perhaps it’s their fault. Perhaps the team’s simply behind the curve when it comes to player health and sports medicine. And perhaps the team culture is a major detractor. 

It is perhaps no accident that in the past couple of years, the team at first stopped playing the Tomahawk Chant over the PA in the wake of severe public criticism, and then it gradually reintroduced it to quell its own fan revolt. The team is not known for its progressiveness, and this is true in multiple areas.

Michael Harris is a superstar. So is Drake Baldwin, though he wore down in October. Chris Sale is a Hall of Famer, and Matt Olson could well be on his way, though tragically it’s hard to say the same for Acuña. There are still some Dudes on this roster, and the farm system had its most promising year in quite some time, with Eric Hartman (who really needs a ’70s-themed TV parody tie-in) rocketing up the prospect lists faster than anyone else in baseball. Alex Anthopoulos pulled off a genuine miracle at the deadline once more when he stole Tyler Mahle for next to nothing.

But next year is such a long way away, and the work stoppage is unlikely to help the team or these players address these issues. The Brewers and the Rays play at such an extraordinarily high level, and watching their games reveals a great deal about what we lack. This team could probably win 85 to 90 games next year and go out in the first round again. But the marginal cost of additional wins is high, and it’s a cost that Alex Anthopoulos has over and over declined to pay.