It really should come to no surprise for anyone who has watched the Atlanta Braves in the postseason, but it’s been the pitching that has carried them.
Coming into this postseason we all were dead certain that if the Atlanta Braves had any shot at winning it would have to be their offense that would need to do the heavy lifting.
But in all honesty, outside of a couple of outbursts here and there, the offense hasn’t been particularly great in the postseason.
Granted, they’ve gone up against some really good starting pitching, and that’s what good pitching typically does to good hitting this time of year.
Of the postseason teams that have played at least 5 games, the Braves have the seventh-highest OPS at .708 and they’re hitting just .230 as a team.
Now, perhaps I should write another article on the lack of production from the offense, but my main point here is to show just how good the pitching staff for the Braves has been.
I’m still of the old school mindset that pitching, defense, and timely hitting wins championships. While the Braves offense can be fun when they’re mashing 3-run homers, it’s quite frustrating when they can’t put a ball in play with a runner on third and less than two outs.
Here I go harping on the offense again when I should be talking about the pitching.
But, what I was trying to say is that it’s pitching that wins you championships, and even though that was the biggest question mark for Atlanta coming into the postseason, they’re starting to look like they have the pitching to get it done.
We all know what Max Fried is capable of. He’s the ace of this staff, and yet he has the worst ERA of any of their pitchers in the postseason at 3.33.
In fact, he and Chris Martin are the only Braves pitchers who have surrendered a run in 49 innings.
The two rookies that came into the postseason with question marks, Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright, have combined for 17.2 shutout innings.
I think we’ve seen enough of Anderson at this point to know he’s someone we can depend on, and Wright is certainly getting there.
We all knew the bullpen was elite, but it’s proven to be even better if that’s possible. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the starters are going so deep into games, which we didn’t see at all in the regular season.
But the Braves have seven or eight guys that you can call on out of the bullpen and feel pretty confident in them.
You go back to what the Washington Nationals did in 2019 and they have maybe six totals pitchers (starters and relievers) that they felt confident in and they rode those to a World Series title.
I see it all the time in college baseball. Teams will have a handful of pitchers they trust and they’ll ride them to the College World Series.
But I’ve never seen a team have nearly 10 pitchers they feel really good about like the Braves do.
Now, before we get too excited, the Braves didn’t exactly play offensive juggernauts in the first two rounds. I know the Los Angeles Dodgers present a much bigger challenge.
Still, these pitchers have seem unfazed by the big moment and if one guy does have it that day (as Fried didn’t in game one) there are plenty of other arms to choose from that can get the job done, and that’s what makes the Braves so scary in this postseason.