As we turn the calendar to July and move deeper into the heart of summer, the days are getting hotter, and so, too, are your first-place Atlanta Braves.
It’s true: no team in baseball had a better month of June than the Atlanta Braves.
A 20-8 mark for the month was good enough to take over the lead in the National League East, and stretch that lead to 5.5 games as it stands now.
With that being said, a baseball season is most certainly a marathon and not a sprint.
So while the Atlanta Braves may have sprinted their way to first place at a pace that only The Freeze could rival, their work is far from done.
Welcome to July: the month of baseball’s All-Star Break, impending trade deadline, and the beginning of summer’s “dog days”.
It’s at this juncture in the season where a team’s identity is pretty well-established, but the performance in the first couple of weeks immediately after the All-Star Break can determine which direction its front office chooses to go for the upcoming trade deadline.
For all teams in contention mode, it’s a critical time of making a last push to upgrade your roster before the final two-month stretch run.
For the Atlanta Braves, July is especially important, as their current solid lead atop the standings could grow – or diminish – quite rapidly.
Braves will see lots of Phillies, Nationals in July
In the month of July, the Atlanta Braves will start at home, end on the road, and play lots of games against NL East foes along the way.
Specifically, several games against their two biggest challengers in the fight for the division: the Phillies and the Nationals.
The Braves begin the month back at the friendly confines of Atlanta’s SunTrust Park with a six-game homestand against the Phillies and Marlins. These account for the team’s final six games before the All-Star Break.
As usual, how the Braves play in these 6 games will determine the feeling that the team – and fanbase – will have freshest in their minds throughout the All-Star Break the following week.
Can Atlanta ride momentum into the break?
Itinerary
The games against the Marlins will certainly help, as Atlanta is a dominating 8-1 in 2019 versus the last-place Fish, but so important are those games against the Phillies, who currently sit in the Braves’ rearview mirror, but do own a 4 out of 6 games advantage against Atlanta so far this season.
Then comes the All-Star Break…a time for players to rest, recover, and gear up for what promises to be a wild second half ride.
Atlanta picks things up again with its final (yes, final! yay!) West Coast road trip of the regular season, and it’s an extremely brief one…with three games at Petco Park against the Padres.
The road trip then turns to the Midwest, where the Braves will take on the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers in a three-game set.
One would think that the Atlanta Braves should at least be happy with going 3-3 (.500) on that six-game road trip out of the All-Star Break, though hoping for better. The far travel (San Diego) and stiff competition (Brewers) won’t make it easy.
Holding their own in that road trip is especially important when you consider this fact: from July 18th through July 31st, the Braves play 12 games…and 10 of those 12 come against the Washington Nationals or Philadelphia Phillies.
You got it. Right in the heart of trade deadline season, the Braves will be in the thick of matchups against the two teams chasing them down in the division race.
That 12-game stretch starts with a 4-game homestand against the Nationals, and it ends with a 6-game road trip (3 each at Philly and D.C.), with a friendly 2-game interleague stint against the hapless Kansas City Royals sandwiched in between.
To recap/summarize, here’s July for the Atlanta Braves:
- 3 vs Phillies
- 3 vs Marlins
- All-Star Break
- 3 @ Padres
- 3 @ Brewers
- 4 vs Nationals
- 2 vs Royals (days off both before and after this series)
- 3 @ Phillies
- 3 @ Nationals
Final Notes
- July consists of an even split of 12 home games and 12 road games…not that it matters for Atlanta, as the Braves have been pretty good both home (24-17) and away (26-18) in 2019.
- 16 of the 24 games in July come against teams from the NL East…and of those 16, 13 come against the Nationals or Phillies.
- The combined record for Atlanta’s July opponents is 234-266 (.468)…which is deceiving in that it is weighed down by the Marlins and Royals, who the Braves only play a total of five games against.
- 19 of the 24 (79%) games for the month of July come against teams with a record above .500. To compare, April was at 58% games vs teams above .500, May at 57%, and June at just 36%.
- In other words, the Braves are going from the month with the lowest percentage of games against good teams…to the month with the highest percentage of games against good teams.
We’ll see how it plays out in July for the Atlanta Braves.