It won’t be a cakewalk for the Atlanta Braves in September, but this team is at least equipped as well as they can be for the task of taking the NL East for the 4th straight year.
Yes, last week the Atlanta Braves were swept by the Western All-Star team known as the LA Dodgers. But it wasn’t a bad series for the NL East leaders overall, and if it comes to a playoff matchup between these teams… the Braves know they can hang with them.
It wasn’t all good news, of course, but hopefully Atlanta learned a few things that they will be able to bring back to LA if they get another chance… namely these:
- It takes more than just homers to beat them
- Pay close attention to what Charlie Morton and Max Fried did to their bats — their pitching efforts were effective
- Everything needs to be tightened up: defense, offense, base-running, bullpen. The Dodgers are extremely patient and will exploit any gifts they receive
The Braves have now experienced game sets against 4 possible playoff opponents in the past month (with the Padres coming soon). The class of these teams was the Dodgers, with the Brewers probably ranking second.
Projections right now suggest that the Braves — should they prevail in the East — will face Milwaukee in a first-round matchup. Their strengths are in pitching — both starters and the bullpen.
Atlanta will need to treat Milwaukee as if they are the Dodgers in that regard… working counts and spoiling pitches. That’s not been their forte this season, as the Braves really like to ambush pitches early in the count.
But we’ll wait to discuss that further if the matchup actually materializes that way.
The Atlanta Braves and the month of decision
In this week’s podcast, we do discuss that Dodger series and then dovetailed that into our collective “Trust Issues” about the Braves bullpen. I think we’re gonna need more therapy as we go along this month.
After that and a discussion of the September schedules for the Braves and Phillies, we get into a detailed look at the National League’s MVP race… which actually appears to be wide open right now.
Could Riley or Freeman win? The answer is probably “Yes… if one or them gets scorching hot in these last 4 weeks.”
Wow, wait… yeah: there’s just 4 weeks left in the regular season!
Guess we oughta get to the audio, then: here’s the direct download link, followed by the in-line player.
You certainly also have the opportunity to get this from your favorite subscription service, too… and if you have subscribed, then you already had a jump on everybody else (but you already knew that, too!).
Thanks for listening… and if I recall correctly, Jake promised that we’ll do this weekly for the rest of the season… never mind the ‘as needed’ special editions during the off-season to come.