The Atlanta Braves misinterpreted last week’s “low point” as a challenge

Yes, let’s not beat around the bush. This is easily the worst baseball series the Atlanta Braves have played since they returned to relevance during the 2018 season. In every way the Braves could fail in Major League Baseball this season, they found a way to do so this past week. Sometimes it was truly shocking. Other times it was sad and completely predictable. But it was sad every time, and it’s incredibly frustrating to see what’s looking more and more like a lost season unfold right before our eyes.

This all started last weekend when the Braves lost a close 4-3 loss to the Marlins. While it’s always frustrating to lose to a team of Miami’s caliber (and I really hate to say that since the Braves are clearly in no position to look down on any team right now), the next day it definitely felt like everything was going to be OK. After all, the Braves had Max Fried back from the IL and he was sure to take down the team he had already tormented twice this season, right? Right?

No. Fried received an extremely rude reception on the mound the next day, and the Marlins went on to win 7-0 over the Braves. All the goodwill that had been generated by the Braves’ series win in Milwaukee (remember that?! It actually happened!) was frustratingly evaporated after they lost a series to a team that they not only historically dominated, but that was in extremely weakened form after the All-Star break. Personally, I was so annoyed by that game that I thought the Marlins were going to immediately reel off five straight losses or something. Although they haven’t had a losing streak yet, they lost both of their series this week to the Reds and Padres.

But I digress! The point is, it was entirely reasonable to believe that this could have been an aberration where the Marlins simply rallied for this series and wanted to put a dent in Atlanta’s potential race for a postseason spot. After all, the Braves were still atop the Wild Card standings and with the Phillies slowing down a bit, it seemed like all the Braves had to do was get their act together against Milwaukee and pick up where they left off the week before against the Brewers and everything would go back in the right direction. It would have been a tall order to beat the Brewers again, but they just showed they were capable of doing it.

Oh, how wrong we were. The Braves then suffered one of their worst three-game losses since Truist Park opened in 2017. Unless your name was Aaron Bummer, Raisel Iglesias or Luke Williams (who is definitely not a pitcher), you were getting beaten as a Braves pitcher. 10-0 Milwaukee in the series opener. 8-5 to the Brewers in the middle game, then a 16-7 loss to close out the sweep, a result that was extremely flattering to the Braves because they had been 13-3 at one point. The only positive thing about this series was that the Braves actually showed signs of life at the plate after not receiving a shutout in two consecutive nine-inning games for the first time in a decade, extending their shutout streak to 24 innings – again the first time in a decade that they had not received a shutout for that long.

After going scoreless for so long, it seemed like the Braves were ready to go and finally strike themselves. With a trip to Colorado next, it seemed perfect for the offense — and also the absolute worst time for these pitchers to be heading to such an extreme environment. And as it turned out, the Braves did indeed strike — their own fans, to be exact. If you watched every inning of that series in Colorado, I recommend you see your doctor ASAP to make sure your blood pressure is still within the normal range, because that was a completely insane series at Coors Field — one that was reminiscent of the pre-humidor days, and not in a good or fun way for the Braves.

In this series, Atlanta’s offense proved that the flashes of life seen during the nightmarish Brewers series had indeed traveled with them to Denver. Marcell Ozuna continued to hit the ball as the only consistent member of this lineup in 2024 and Jorge Soler decided he really, really liked Coors Field and started to crush the ball over the course of the weekend. Sean Murphy showed signs of finally getting going at the batting crease, Travis d’Arnaud continued to hit the ball pretty well and Matt Olson made his presence felt in a big way over the course of this three-game series. While it’s very easy to imagine this all just evaporating into thin air once they go from the extreme of Coors Field to the near-extreme of Oracle Park for four games, it really was a good feeling to see this Braves lineup finally look like what we’ve been used to for the past few years, rather than this 2024 aberration.

However, the reputation the offense had built was completely destroyed by the performance of Atlanta’s pitchers and defense this weekend. The Braves allowed 23 runs this weekend and let’s look at how it all played out:

• A 6-5 loss on Friday that saw Brenton Doyle make the season’s 20/20 club. That included a game-winning seventh inning in which, just after Ramón Laureano and Jorge Soler tied the game with solo home runs, AJ Minter came in and immediately allowed two doubles to give us the final score.
• An 11-8 win on Saturday that saw Max Fried get his second straight bad start since returning from the IL and Aaron Bummer get three runs and not even make it out of his frame. Coors got him and Sam Hilliard in particular. They both teamed up at one point to overwhelm the defense – here’s a “web gem” that really shows how things are going for the Braves right now:

• An absolutely catastrophic collapse by Coors on Sunday, in which (in a single inning) the bullpen turned what should have been a good feeling series win into a victory that elicited this reaction from Brian Snitker:

We have to talk about the eighth inning because it was truly incredible to witness. I’ll be honest with you: I tuned out for a moment to watch the end of the Olympics Closing Ceremony. After watching Tom Cruise, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Billie Eilish do their thing to give everyone a taste of Los Angeles ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics, I was in a great mood! Then I tuned back into the baseball game and saw that an 8-2 lead had become an 8-4 lead after Luke Jackson was bombed on the field. That was okay, though! While the Rockies had two men on the field, Luke had gotten two outs, and all we needed was the usually reliable Joe Jiménez to get just one more out to make it into the ninth inning.

I don’t have to tell you what happened, but I will because I’m a sick man and you’re sick people for reading this. Jiménez allowed four hits in a row – a two-RBI single by Charlie Blackmon because Charlie Blackmon apparently hates the Braves, a single to Ezequiel Tovar, an RBI single to Ryan McMahon, and then the clincher: a double by Brendan Rogers to make it 9-8. The Braves then went down in order in the ninth inning (including a situation where Luke Williams came in as a pinch runner after a leadoff single by Marcell Ozuna, only to get caught in a GIDP with Matt Olson) and now here I am venting my anger about it.

I’m not going to sit here and tell y’all that things aren’t going to get worse for the Braves this year, because apparently they’re reading this and seeing this as a challenge. I said their 10-0 loss to the Brewers was the low point, and then they went one better by blowing a six-run lead in one inning against a team that’s 31 games under .500. I have to reiterate that this is a stadium where that can happen – 2024 Rockies or not, they scored 20 runs against the Red Sox in this stadium not too long ago, and they also bombarded the Pirates with 16 runs earlier this season. The Rockies have proven they can clean up at any time in their home stadium.

With that being said, I’m going to use a word I hate in sports: pathetic. This was absolutely pathetic from the Braves and especially their pitching staff. While it’s worth noting that the Braves would be in an even worse position right now if their pitching staff hadn’t been so great this season, what they did as a collective this week was astonishingly bad. It also seems like the baseball gods have a sense of humor, as this coincided with the performance of Atlanta’s offense, which put together a sustained winning streak for the first time since April. The Atlanta Braves are currently Smokey’s analysis of Craig’s house from “Friday”:

For most of this season, they had pitching but no offense. Now, they have offense but no pitching. They can’t win if they lose, and they lost a lot this week. Somehow, the Braves aren’t in a completely hopeless situation yet, as their upcoming games on this road trip against the Giants and Angels should still be manageable. However, “should” is definitely the operative word here. If this team wants to hold on to a postseason spot again, they’ll have to should come out of their next seven games with one win. However, this team hasn’t been serious for much of this season. If I’m being completely honest, they’ll have to prove it to us if they want a large portion of their fans to believe they have enough left in the tank to somehow make it to the postseason.