It took the Atlanta Braves six months to win the National League East. They now have six games to prepare for what comes next.
“Winning the division is an awesome accomplishment. I had a wise man (Bobby Cox) tell me once […] ‘This is the toughest one, because it takes six months to do it.’ The other ones, obviously, are more special, but you can do it in a week. It takes six months to do what we did. And it takes everybody, and we’ve used everybody.”
Walt Weiss said that moments after the Braves defeated the Houston Astros on Sunday, and just before the clubhouse doused him in beer and champagne to celebrate the NL East title.
The Braves earned the right to celebrate. They also earned the right to stop treating every remaining game as a referendum on their season.
Atlanta’s final six games - three against Cincinnati at Truist Park and three against Miami on the road - are no longer needed to win the NL East or secure a postseason berth. Instead, they can help convert the regular-season roster into a postseason plan.
The Braves know they’ll be playing in the postseason.1 Over the next week, they must determine who gets the ball, who records the most important outs, and which version of the lineup gives them the best chance to advance to the National League Division Series.
Winning the division answered the season’s biggest question. It didn’t answer everything. What do the Braves still need to figure out?
Let’s talk about it.
Do the standings still matter?
There’s an outside chance the Braves could still get one of the top two seeds in the National League and bypass the Wild Card round altogether…but it’s a longshot.
Los Angeles holds a four-game lead with six games remaining for both teams. Atlanta owns the tiebreaker, so drawing even would be enough, but the Dodgers’ magic number for the No. 2 seed is three. Put another way, the Braves need 10 of the remaining 12 results - their wins plus Dodgers losses - to break their way. Even a 6-0 finish would require Los Angeles to go no better than 2-4.
It’s not impossible, but it’s statistically unlikely.
And so, because of that, the Braves are effectively locked into the No. 3 seed in the National League, waiting on the results of the Wild Card race to determine their first-round opponent. The top seed in the Wild Card round, which would be Atlanta, will face the final team in the field. Philadelphia holds that spot over Arizona by four games, again, with just six remaining.
In light of that, preparing Chris Sale for Wild Card Game 1 becomes more important than pushing for a few more regular season victories. And to be clear, “rest everyone” and “play every game to win” are not the only options here - the Braves can stagger rest days for the position player group and back off of some of the key pitchers without outright punting any of the games this week.
Take Sunday afternoon, for example - due to recent workload, they didn’t use the trio of Raisel Iglesias, Didier Fuentes, and Dylan Lee in leverage moments late. Instead, they used Victor Mederos to get out of a jam, asked AJ Smith-Shawver to handle the two-inning assignment Fuentes has recently filled, leveraged lefty Ray Kerr as the setup man in the 8th, and then gave Dylan Dodd the save opportunity.
There are some other tasks Atlanta needs to handle this week to prepare for postseason play:
Arrange the postseason rotation
Atlanta has announced its rotation for this week versus the Reds as prospect JR Ritchie on Tuesday, followed by Chris Sale on Wednesday and Tyler Mahle on Thursday.
This sets up Sale and Mahle to get the ball for games one and two of the Wild Card round on one additional day of rest. There are your first two postseason starters.
The Marlins series over the weekend might give us an idea of whether the Braves want to go with veteran Martín Pérez or “Slider King” Grant Holmes in a potential game three - watch for that rotation announcement on Thursday, as both pitchers would be lined up to pitch this weekend and then come back for a Thursday Wild Card Game 3.
And that Pérez vs Holmes decision might end up being an important one, as each offers a different profile. Holmes has the better ability to miss bats, but has been hit exceptionally hard this season. Pérez is much better at managing contact, but he also misses fewer bats and relies on groundball contact to get his outs.
For what it’s worth, both have mostly handled their business against Philadelphia this season. Pérez is 1-1 with a 3.72 ERA in two starts, but with six walks in 9.2 innings. Holmes is 1-0 with a 3.05 ERA in four starts, although he’s allowed four home runs in 20.2 innings.
To make their decision, Atlanta should evaluate these final starts by October usefulness, not September ERA. How does the stuff look? How efficiently can each starter navigate a lineup? How does he recover? Which guy would provide the best matchup?
Build the bullpen hierarchy
One role is known when it comes to Atlanta’s bullpen: Raisel Iglesias gets the ninth inning.
Everything else is a question right now.
Robert Suarez threw a scoreless rehab inning in Triple-A Gwinnett on Sunday, but it was their series finale. Does Suarez come back this week to finish rehabbing in the majors? Or do they use him in simulated games and let his first MLB innings since June be in the postseason? I’m guessing they bring him back, because they need to know if he’s ready to handle the high-leverage innings again.
Who gets the ball in the seventh and eighth innings, when the opponent’s best hitters are due? Dylan Lee’s been the go-to all season, but he’s given the team a 6.55 ERA since the All-Star Break and has barely worked in the month of September (four innings) as the Braves have attempted to give him some rest.
Which relievers can work on consecutive days? Didier Fuentes has mostly been protected from back-to-backs, with the team lately preferring to work him two innings at a time rather than on consecutive days. But with up to three games over three days in the Wild Card round, can he be effective in that second consecutive outing? Can AJ Smith-Shawver, who handled that normal Fuentes usage on Sunday, be used the same way in October or will he get single innings on consecutive days?
Who enters with runners already on base? We saw a test of this on Sunday, with Victor Mederos getting the call to bail Martín Pérez out of a bases-loaded-and-only-one-out jam in the 5th inning.
Who is auditioning for an October role? Are the Braves going to carry both Ray Kerr and Brent Suter in October, or will one of the lefties be left off the roster for a higher-octane option? Will anyone in Gwinnett, like James Karinchak or Blake Burkhalter, be considered for the postseason roster?
Who supplies length if a Wild Card starter exits early? There’s usually at least one starting pitcher squeezed out of the rotation in October, working out of the bullpen. AJ Smith-Shawver might end up being a leverage reliever, but what about JR Ritchie or Owen Murphy as a postseason length option? Is one of the injured pitchers, Bryce Elder (knee) or Reynaldo López (shoulder), going to make it back in time? Or is this where Kerr or Suter have a shot of making the roster?
The Braves should use the final week to intentionally create postseason situations. Bring a candidate into the seventh with two runners aboard. Let someone face three consecutive lefties. Test a reliever on the second straight day.
October is the wrong time to discover that the pitcher Atlanta considered its fourth-best reliever cannot perform the fourth-most-important job.
Pick TWO lineups, not one
The Braves have experimented a lot more with the lineup card this season under Walt Weiss than they did the last few under Brian Snitker. By my count, Atlanta’s used 125 distinct batting orders this season, with the most prevalent being used just six times.2
By contrast, the generationally great (and remarkably healthy) 2023 offense used only 80 different batting orders, with its most common order appearing 80 times.
Atlanta’s used four different leadoff hitters and nine different cleanup hitters this season as they’ve searched for a lineup that answers all the questions an opposing pitching staff can throw at them.
Trying to figure out the proper lineup card breaks down into three decisions:
1: Who leads off?
Drake Baldwin has been the go-to of late, but Ronald Acuña Jr. has a lot of experience in the role and rotates in with Baldwin a few times a week. Is this situational, determined by player preference, or what? There’s a handedness factor here, as Acuña’s gotten seven of the last eight starts against a lefty, but Michael Harris II mixed in there as well against both lefties and righties.
2: How do Baldwin and Sean Murphy share playing time?
The two catchers do different things, both offensively and defensively. Murphy’s a much better game caller and blocker, while Baldwin’s the clear winner from an offensive perspective. But Murphy’s recent slump - he hit .292 with a .888 OPS in his first 14 games off the injured list, but that’s fallen to .108 with a .449 OPS in his 11 games in the month of September - means that there could be a world where Baldwin starts behind the plate and the DH spot goes to someone else.
I’d be giving Murphy four or five of these final six starts to see if his bat can get going before October.
3: What happens against left-handed pitching?
The impression is that outfielder Lane Thomas will likely miss the postseason with the oblique issue that sent him to the injured list on September 8th. In his absence, Mauricio Dubón has started in left for all three games the Braves have played against a lefty starter. Is Ha-Seong Kim at shortstop and Dubón in left field the optimal configuration of the lineup? Or will Mike Yastrzemski’s left-on-left homer from Sunday give Atlanta some confidence that he can hold his own in October against playoff-caliber lefty starting pitching?
Give every marginal roster player a job
Figuring out those two lineups now matters because Atlanta will likely do less experimenting with its starting lineup in October, even if Weiss maneuvers more aggressively within games.
That also means the composition of the bench will change. A postseason bench is not a collection of the four best remaining hitters. It’s usually a collection of players who carry specific roles that can change one specific inning.
Do the Braves want a veteran pinch-hit option for late in games? If so, they should probably get Dominic Smith some at-bats this week; he has started exactly one game in the month of September and gotten a total of five at-bats.
Does Atlanta need to carry a late-inning outfield defender? Atlanta has shown little inclination to remove Ronald Acuña Jr. for defense, so the choice between Brewer Hicklen and DaShawn Keirsey Jr may come down to which player it prefers as a pinch-runner or spot starter when Acuña serves as the designated hitter.
Do the Braves carry a third catcher in October, or do they rely on Kyle Farmer’s past experience behind the plate as an emergency catcher? No other catchers were on the 40-man roster on September 1st, the deadline for postseason eligibility, so my guess is that Farmer gets the nod and they’ll ask the Commissioner’s Office for a waiver to add someone else if they lose a backstop to injury.
And this extends to the bullpen, too: Who is the go-to multi-inning reliever? Who do you call on out of the pen when you’ve gotta have a strikeout to get out of a jam? Who is the emergency starter, should Sale or Mahle be suddenly unable to go for any reason? Does either JR Ritchie or Owen Murphy deserve an October bullpen role where their stuff can play up in shorter spurts?
You’re not looking for the most well-rounded players here; you’re looking for the most impactful players at the specific roles you’re trying to fill.
Rest the right players without the offense going dormant
Atlanta’s offense came alive a bit over the weekend, hitting seven home runs vs Houston in their sweep of the Astros. And several key pieces of the lineup are all starting to get hot - Ronald’s nuclear, hitting .309/.371/.655 with five homers in the last 15 days. Matt Olson’s right behind him, hitting .278 with three homers, tied with Mike Yastrzemski’s three. Baldwin’s hitting .322 in the last two weeks, but they’re all behind Mauricio Dubón’s .346 average in the last 14 games.
Several of these players have had health concerns this season, like Acuña, and could probably use some strategic load management before the postseason gets here.
But six games of irregular playing time could also disrupt timing immediately before a short best-of-three series, especially for routine-oriented hitters used to being in the lineup nearly every single day.
I’d expect the Braves to be a bit strategic here, trying to balance getting these guys their work in without making them wear the full weight of a week’s worth of games:
Stagger days off rather than emptying the lineup at once.
Remove regulars early after they receive three plate appearances.
Avoid unnecessary defensive innings for players managing physical issues.
Preserve normal preparation and batting routines.
Keep the likely postseason lineup together often enough to develop continuity.
The goal isn’t to rest them as much as possible. It’s to get them as ready as possible, and maximum readiness will come at different times for everyone.
Maximize this time
Winning the National League East gives Atlanta six games without the pressure that shaped the previous five months. That freedom should not be wasted.
The Braves can rest their stars, arrange their rotation, test their relievers and define the jobs available at the edge of the roster. They can enter the postseason with tired players, unanswered questions and no clear plan, or they can treat the next week as a postseason rehearsal.
The Braves no longer need these games to prove they belong in October. They need to use them to decide how they intend to survive it.
I wanted to say they know they’ll be playing in “October”, but since the first two games of the Wild Card round are September 29th and 30th, they could theoretically be done before the calendar hits October if everything goes wrong.
Baldwin, Acuña, Olson, Harris, Albies, Dubón, Yastrzemski, Riley, and Jim Jarvis
A terrific season overcoming perhaps more injuries than any of the other NL playoff teams. Great job by AA, the front office, Weiss and the coaching staff. And of course great job by the players. Let’s get the bullpen sorted and hope enough guys get hot in the playoffs.
Just feel like this team over achieved and the coaching staff made the difference.
And in a tough division with bigger market teams like Mets and Phillies.