I can distinctly remember reading an article about the recent history of Georgia football sometime back in high school. The writer said something that never resonated so strongly with me until now when, talking about UGA in the early 1980s, she said, “We never thought the Dawgs would go more than two years between Sugar Bowl appearances.”
And then the great 20-year drought hit when UGA football was mediocre at best.
Growing up as a Braves fan in the 1990s, it felt like the Braves would never go more than a season or two without appearing in the Fall Classic. And then the great 20-year drought hit when Braves baseball was mediocre at best.
But tonight. Oh, tonight. Yes, before I go too deep into “Westside Story,” tonight is the night. The Atlanta Braves will lace up their cleats and pound their mitts for a World Series game for the first time in 22 years.
There are so many reasons to be optimistic about the Atlanta Braves moving forward in the next few seasons. After all, we made the World Series without so many key pieces. Ronald Acuna, Jr. has been out since the dog days of summer. Mike Soroka has been down. Marcel Ozuna has been…well, the less said about him, the better.
With an entire offseason approaching for Soroka and Acuna to get better, and for a suitable replacement for Ozuna to appear, as he is not likely to ever play in Atlanta again, the Braves should be just as talented next year, right?
I want everyone to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. I am not here to disparage what the 2021 Braves have done. I don’t work for the LA Times.
The national media has put out so many reasons why the Braves shouldn’t even be in the World Series this year. “What about the 100-win Dodgers” or “What about all the injuries the Dodgers had” or “What about homefield advantage for the Dodgers” or “Weren’t you guys supposed to just lay down and let the Dodgers win?”
If I may briefly address the events of the NLCS, the Braves had every right to be in that series. For starters, Atlanta won the division and then beat Milwaukee’s “unbeatable” pitching in the Divisional Series. That’s how you earn the right to play in the NLCS, isn’t it?
As for homefield advantage, let me point out this one little caveat nobody seems to have noticed. Atlanta only needed six wins to take home the NLCS trophy. We won all three games in Atlanta and one in LA. Had the Dodgers been granted homefield advantage, the Braves could have still won all three games in Atlanta and just one in LA to win the series.
I will admit that the travel schedule would have favored LA at that point, but the Braves wrapped up their DS faster than LA did, so we wouldn’t have been flying cross-country and playing on short rest no matter what. And, even so, all we needed to do was win one game in LA. It didn’t have to be one of the first two, but it was. And consider that Atlanta actually had a late lead in two of the three games played in LA.
Let’s also keep in mind that the 2020 Dodgers got to face a red-hot Atlanta team in the NLCS for seven neutral site games and no travel. I can’t believe that there would have been an epic collapse last season if we would have gotten three or four games in our stadium and in front of our own fans, but everybody had to deal with the same problem.
I would call the Dodgers your 2021 “On Paper” champs, but they would probably just cry about getting a paper cut. (Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash)
Frankly, I don’t even want to address the injury complaint brought up by so many because it is patently absurd. Everybody in baseball has to deal with injuries come October. It’s a 162-game regular season and you play the hand you’re dealt. The Braves were short some of their best talent and had to piece together a roster with some brilliant trades. The Dodgers had the same option and failed to live up.
And how many years did a 100-win Braves team get trounced in the NLDS by some plucky, upstart Wild Card team? Nobody mourned for us then. Why should we mourn for the Dodgers now?
This Braves baseball team is special. They have been playing some of the best baseball in the country since making crucial trade deadline acquisitions like bringing Adam Duvall back and adding a tiny, little piece named Eddie Rosario who just so happened to have the greatest NLCS performance of all time.
So yes. This team 100 percent deserves to be playing for the World Series this week. Anyone who says differently has an opinion you can just go ahead and ignore wholesale.
However, just because the future looks bright, it doesn’t mean we can sit back and just “enjoy the experience” of playing in a World Series this year. The Braves need to win and they need to win now.
There are three key reasons I say this, and let me name them here one by one: Freddie Freeman, Ron Washington, and Liberty Media.
First and foremost, this ownership group is notoriously stingy. The Braves are an investment for them, and spending big bucks to win a World Series isn’t necessarily seen as a boon to their investment portfolio. Liberty Media wants the team to do well, because successful teams are more valuable, but maybe not that well.
Listen. I fully respect the mentality of being efficient with your spending and using your money wisely in sports. Blowing money on top-dollar prospects is a formula for disaster in the long run, so I don’t really want Atlanta spending $300 MIL a year on the next hot thang. At the same time, you sometimes have to spend a little money to compete.
Everyone loved talking about how the Braves beat the Dodgers with a payroll that was significantly smaller. I don’t see that as an insult to LA so much as I see it as a warning to Atlanta. We need to level the playing field by increasing the payroll a little bit and locking up some big talent for the future.
That being said, we also can’t be like the other SoCal team that is spending big bucks on two names who aren’t producing playoff seasons. All respect to Anthony Rendon and Mike Trout with the Angels, they’re both greats, but they are a pair of expensive albatrosses. The Angels can’t compete with two Titanic-worthy boat anchors holding them down. Together, these two players cost the Angels about $70 MIL a year.
Add in Justin Upton’s $28 MIL and Shohei Ohtani’s $5.5 MIL for next season, and you’re looking at a grand total of more than $103 MIL for four guys. Sure, they’re four really good guys, but that is an enormous chunk of change for such little potential productivity.
For less than that same amount, the 2021 Braves have been able to pay Freddie Freeman, Charlie Morton, Will Smith, Drew Smyly, Travis D’Arnaud, Chris Martin, Dansby Swanson, Max Fried, Ozzie Albies, Jorge Soler and Eddie Rosario. And think of all the names I haven’t even mentioned.
Admittedly, I am comparing the 2021 Braves payroll after the trade deadline against the 2022 Angels payroll as it stands right now, but there’s a big reason for that: Freddie Freeman.
But…who will deliver our hugs in 2022? Who will bring the Free-Bombs!? What about the hugs?! (Photo by Josue Escoto on Unsplash)
You see, Freeman is a free man after the final out of the World Series. So if I tried to compare the 2022 Atlanta payroll against the Angels’, then it wouldn’t really be a fair comparison.
And I don’t think he’s coming back to Atlanta.
We have to give Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos a lot of credit for how he picked up some much-needed roster assistance at the deadline to prop up a struggling team. He is directly responsible for Atlanta making the World Series and should be on the very short list for GM of the Year.
He also wasn’t able to get a deal done for Freddie before the 2021 season started, an offseason that saw us spend quality money on signing Ozuna back. I realize that Ozuna was on a one-year deal, so he had to get signed or walk, but it was a big bat that we needed and he was resigned for a multi-year deal.
In the 2020-21 offseason, I was convinced that we were trying to replace Freeman’s bat with Ozuna’s long term and we were ready to let Freeman walk.
I’m still not convinced that he’s coming back, but there are some positive signs. Two of our big trade deadline acquisitions involved first base prospects Bryce Ball and Mason Berne (for Joc Pederson and Stephen Vogt, respectively). You typically wouldn’t trade away key prospects at a position like that unless you were confident in the future of that position. And, as previously mentioned, Ozuna’s future is very uncertain right now.
If the plan was initially to replace Freeman’s offensive production with Ozuna’s moving forward, that is no longer a viable plan. Still, I am nervous that we have not heard anything from anyone regarding a potential deal with Freeman, and I’m afraid that we are going to let him slip away in the offseason. So soak up the World Series, because we may be missing Freeman’s bat, his defense, and his clubhouse leadership very soon.
My third key to why this is a win-now opportunity is because we are probably going to lose everyone’s favorite third-base coach, Ron Washington, to a head job in the very near future. His name has popped up in just about every watchlist the last few weeks, and the man certainly deserves another shot at being a manager.
I can tell you personally that so many people have not been this concerned about a potential Wash-less future since the final 15 minutes of the movie Serenity.
Trigger Warning for a 16-year old movie death. (Photo by Sandis Helvigs on Unsplash)
While a multitude of fans are enamored with what our bats have done at times this season, one of the real keys to this Atlanta team’s success has been consistently reliable defense. Sure, much of that is obviously the talent of the players, but Washington’s coaching up is equally obvious. Braves social media is constantly sharing videos of Washington doing ground-ball drills with Albies and the other infielders, making sure that they are ready to do their part in the game.
Because of that preparedness, we saw an infield that was able to make just about every difficult play required of them during the regular season and so far in the postseason. There is always a hope that these guys will be able to maintain their own preparation in a dark time with no Washington Windmills, but he is undoubtedly a presence that has benefited this team. Selfishly, I hope he doesn’t get a managerial job he so desperately deserves.
Nobody wants to go into the World Series thinking that they’ll do anything but win it in four games. I certainly hope that’s the outcome, especially because we have to win in either four or five games if we want to have that homefield trophy presentation. I can only imagine what the Astros fans would do to drown out the ceremony if we win it in their ballpark. Probably bang on trashcans, or something silly like that.
Even though we all want to win the title this year (and next year, and the year after, and the year after…), we all know that there’s about a 50/50 chance that we won’t. When the season starts back up in 2022, our odds of winning the World Series drop significantly to 1/30.
Well, maybe 1/29. Nobody gives the Mets a real shot, anyway.