Atlanta Braves podcast S2E13: Explaining the unexplainable

How do you account for the Atlanta Braves’ slow start to the 2021 season? 

This week’s podcast started off with a run-down of the various Atlanta Braves injuries, but quickly devolved into thoughts about roster-building philosophies and ideas about why things are the way they are right now.

We knew that depth would be an issue, so it’s no surprise that Alex Anthopoulos and Brian Snitker are having their heads spin over the myriad of roster moves that injuries have forced.

But the replacement players truly haven’t been much of an issue.  Instead, it’s been a combination of poor relief and poor batting from the “regulars” that has cost Atlanta so many games already.

Maybe things are starting to look up for the Braves?

When we recorded this on Thursday evening, it was an off-day for the team having just split two games with the Yankees.  One of those games was given away as a non-hitting team scored twice late without the need of a hit.

It’s those kinds of bullpen problems that should never happen — but that are happening regardless.  This is unfortunately magnified as a result of an ineffective offense.

We speculate in the podcast about some things that might happen this weekend — and some have:

• Cristian Pache is healthy again, but was optioned to the Alternate Training Site to get his swing back in shape.
• Guillermo Heredia is going to stick around a while longer, as the only center-fielder who is hitting.

The surprise was that Austin Riley has now homered in two straight games — maybe that’s luck or maybe that’s a trend, but certainly he needed some confidence-building luck to come his way, and that’s exactly what happened.

In looking forward to this weekend, the challenge involves a happy Arizona club that just came off a sweep of the Reds at the riverfront.  They score a lot of runs… and they also give up a lot.

Atlanta held them off last night — they’ve now got a chance to do more damage on Saturday.  But maybe you can get in a podcast airing before that happens.

So here’s that podcast to get our takes on these things. The direct download link is available right here in the event you’d like to listen to it at a later time.

This player below can get you the full story right away… or you can certainly check out your favorite podcast subscription service to find “Tomahawk Take” there.

So let’s see if this team can patch together a few crooked numbers tonight?