Braves Season Ends In Frustration With NLDS Loss To Dodgers

Brad Rowland (0:21)

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Hammer Territory Podcast, episode 469

My name is Brad Rowland, coming to you on a Wednesday evening here in early October. It's the funeral episode, and I'm joined by Scott Coleman. Scott, we always post for work. We're posting. We don't want to be here, but we are. How are you?

Scott Coleman (0:39)

Hello, Brad. I think at the end of a baseball season, it's just such a long ride for six and a half months. We've been watching the Braves every single night. You add another six weeks of spring training. I mean, basically, since early February, these guys have been a big part of our daily conscience and what we're looking forward to watching. And you live with the team and you die with the team. And I don't know, I think at the end of these seasons, your emotions and your feelings about the team always are a little different. I know when I think back to like 2022 and 2023, when they lost to the Phillies, it was like anger, like disappointment, disgust. In 2024, we knew it was kind of a dead team walking. They had to go to San Diego. They got smoked. It was over within 24 hours. You know, and I don't know, I wasn't losing sleep over that 2014 25 was a disaster.

I don't know. I have a lot of emotions right now. We'll probably talk through a lot of feelings about this team.

I think the, you know, it was just so disheartening to watch this team try to swing a bat. Try is the key word there. Try to swing a bat was just so incredibly frustrating. It's just, you know, that's what it is. And the pitching staff did its job, held up its end of the bargain for the most part. It was just the offense, the offense, the offense. And that's why, after four games in the NLDS, season's over.

Brad Rowland (1:58)

That's right. And a good way to set it up, and we will get into all those emotions. We will touch on the offense more momentarily, but before we do any of that, let's mix it up, engineered by our friends at Fastenal.

Scott, I want to unpack some of those feelings, but first, as we go, as we mix it up, and we love our friends at Fastenal, supporting us throughout the season, let's talk about the offense.

It's the theme of the day, it's the theme of the series, it's the theme of the playoffs. I mean, they won a series despite the offense, really. And it's been a theme of the last several seasons, honestly. If you want, we don't have to go super duper into that right now if you don't want to, but since that 2023 season where they had the best offense of all time, basically, it's been three years of maddening offense to varying degrees. And that was maybe an encapsulation in this four game series in which the offense just did nothing. I mean, they scored two runs in the two home games. You come home with a chance, you steal a game in game two that you, not that you had no business winning, but you were the underdog in that game, everyone knew it, you steal it, and it's like, all right, here we go. And they come home and you score two runs in two days in your home ballpark. And we'll go over individual players. But as a team, I just pull this. This is the four games. They had a team, full team slash line of 145 batting average, 259 on base, which is actually good with that batting average, but alas. And then they slugged as a team, 242 in the four game series.

Like guys, I guess there's a world in which you just win, you win three games, one to nothing, and you're able to escape. And we gave the caveats last night in the show, so we won't have to do it again. Yes, offense is down. Yes, pitching is better than it's ever been. All that stuff is relevant. It is. The Braves faced literally pretty much four aces from the Dodgers. That's fair context. It's important to include that. At the same time, you cannot post a 501 OPS in a series and expect to win it, and that's why we're doing this podcast today.

Scott Coleman (4:12)

Yeah. Shout out to Michael Harris. Shout out to Ozzy Albies, because those are the only two guys who did anything, anything offensively in the series. I mean, the numbers here are shocking. I'm going to quickly read through them.

In the NLDS, Austin Riley, he of the biggest contract in franchise history, was for 13 with six strikeouts. And since hitting that heroic home run in game one against the Phillies, Austin had one base hit, one. In six games after that moment, Drake Baldwin was 1 for 14 with five strikeouts. Matt Olson was 2 for 16 with six strikeouts. And Ronald Raccoon Jr. was 2 for 15 with four strikeouts.