When Freddie Freeman hears talk of magic numbers for the Braves to clinch, postseason roster plans, securing home-field advantage or the importance of finishing strong for momentum to start the playoffs, you can almost see the veteran first baseman cringe.
“We’ve got to win,” Freeman said Sunday morning, two hours before the Braves’ series finale against the Washington Nationals, which they lost 6-4, their second consecutive defeat following a season-high six-game winning streak. “There’s no thinking about (momentum); you’ve got to play baseball all the way through. I mean, we can’t even think about clinching.
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“We’ve got to play good baseball, and I feel like we’ve been playing really good baseball the last week and a half, two weeks. We can’t even think about clinching right now; we’ve just got to go out there and take one game at a time, and then a week or so from now we’ll see where we’re at.”
Freeman was right — the Braves played good baseball for a week and a half, winning six of seven games on a western road trip and their series opener against the Nationals during a 7-1 stretch since they were swept in a three-game series at home. That increased their National League East lead to 7½ games over Philadelphia and 9½ over the Nationals entering the weekend.
But 18 walks issued by Atlanta pitchers in one 13-inning span Saturday and Sunday and only three runs and eight hits by Braves hitters during a 16-inning stretch were big factors in the Braves’ back-to-back losses to the Nationals. The swoon sapped some of the energy that was fairly crackling from the Braves after they came home from their sweep at San Francisco and then beat the Nationals in the Friday opener.
The Braves got a two-run homer from Charlie Culberson in the eighth to get within a run Sunday, but Brad Brach gave up three hits and a run in the ninth as the Nationals pulled away for a win. Taking the series at SunTrust Park kept the Phillies’ faint playoff hopes alive, albeit on life support.
Atlanta starter Sean Newcomb’s recent struggles continued; he lasted just three innings and gave up five runs and six hits, including homers by Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon. Newcomb has an 11.32 ERA in five home starts (0-4) since he came within one out of a no-hitter July 29 against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Just was hoping for better (Sunday),” Braves manager Brian Snitker said of Newcomb, who has stumbled badly while losing his past four home starts. “His fastball had some hop on it. But it looked like he was trying to make his secondary stuff work instead of just throwing it, letting it go.
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“I didn’t think he was real aggressive, and it hurt him. As good as he was the other day in San Francisco (six innings, three hits Monday), I was just hoping he’d back that up with another good one.”
Freeman can be excused if he seems a bit overly cautious or concerned about anyone taking anything for granted. After all, he was part of the 2011 Braves team that’s known for one of the greatest collapses in sports history.
Other than pitcher Julio Teheran, who came up from the minors to make three starts in 2011, and relievers Jonny Venters and Peter Moylan, Freeman is the only current Brave who was on that Fredi Gonzalez-managed team. Snitker was the third-base coach in 2011, a holdover from legendary manager Bobby Cox’s staff.
The 2011 Braves were 9½ games up in the NL wild-card race on Aug. 26 and 10½ games ahead of St. Louis. A former Baseball Prospectus statistician calculated Atlanta’s odds and said they had a 98.99 percent chance of making it to the playoffs.
But the Braves didn’t make it. The Cardinals won the wild card after the Braves went 9-18 in September. That same season, Boston had a nine-game AL wild-card lead on Sept. 4 and failed to make the playoffs. Atlanta and Boston became the first teams to ever blow leads as large as 8½ games in September.
So even if the Braves’ current lead seems all but insurmountable, especially given the mediocre performance by the Phillies and Nationals in recent weeks, well, Freeman isn’t about to fall into that way of thinking. And he and fellow Braves veteran Nick Markakis don’t want their teammates to be lulled into complacency, either.
The Braves have such a big lead with only two weeks left in the season that they could go 4-9 the rest of the way, the Phillies would need to do better than 10-4 to tie or pass them. If the Braves won just four of their remaining 13 games, the Nationals would have to go 11-1 to catch them. So the odds continue to be very much in the Braves’ favor.
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But Braves veterans who’ve been to — and lost in — the playoffs know how important it can be not to sputter to the finish line.
“Yeah, it’s huge. You can clinch it and get cold,” Markakis said. “And once the playoffs start, it doesn’t matter who you’re playing or up against, it’s all about who’s hot, who’s playing well going into the playoffs. And that pretty much determines it. So it’s important to finish up strong, take care of business and all be on the same page going into the playoffs if we get there.”
Notice he added the caveat “if we get there.” Like Freeman, Markakis is taking nothing for granted. The two were part of Braves teams that lost at least 90 games each of the past three seasons, and Markakis played on similar or worse Baltimore teams during many of his nine years with the Orioles.
Freeman hasn’t been to the postseason since 2013, and Markakis hasn’t gone since his one and only trip with the Orioles in 2014, when he hit a home run to help win a division series against Detroit before the Orioles lost to Kansas City in the ALCS.
The Braves could move a lot closer to clinching by the end of their current 10-game homestand, as they have a three-game series against the Cardinals beginning Monday, followed by a four-game series against the Phillies beginning Thursday. They’ll finish the season with a six-game trip against the New York Mets and Phillies.
The Braves have the NL’s best road record at 45-30, while they are a modest 38-36 at home. No one has been able to agree on the reason or reasons they’ve played their best ball on the road while a majority of their lackluster efforts have come at SunTrust Park.
Newcomb put the Braves in a hole by giving up three runs on four hits and a walk in the first inning, including a Harper two-run homer, then dug it deeper by walking Harper to start the third. A homer from the next batter, Rendon, pushed the Nationals’ lead to 5-0.
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“I think us responding with some runs there (late), getting back in it — yeah, those are all good,” said Braves catcher Tyler Flowers, whose two-run homer in the fourth got the Braves on the board. “But we’ve got to move on and do a better job — I think more specifically pitching and getting ahead of guys and forcing the issue on the opposition instead of getting behind and putting guys on and then giving up a bloop or a hard hit or something.”
The Braves, with only 13 games to play, still have a commanding 6½-game lead over the Phillies and a 7½-game lead over the Nationals, with their magic number reduced to eight over Philadelphia after the Phillies lost to Miami on Sunday. But the Braves’ recent bullpen struggles and erratic pitching from Newcomb and Teheran are among the concerns as they enter the final stretch.
If the playoffs started this week, there’s a chance the Braves would go with a three-man rotation of Mike Foltynewicz, trade-deadline acquisition Kevin Gausman and late-spring signee Anibal Sanchez, with neither five-time Opening Day starter Teheran nor hard-throwing lefty Newcomb assured of having spots in a best-of-five division series. However, given the team’s preference and regularly followed practice of giving extra rest rather than short rest, it seems more likely they would use a four-man rotation for the opening round.
After Teheran issued six walks in four innings of the 7-1 loss Saturday, Newcomb lasted just 73 pitches. Since coming within one out of a no-hitter in the 134-pitch outing against the Dodgers, Newcomb has a .386 opponents batting average and an average of four innings pitched in his past five home starts.
He’s 2-4 with a 6.52 ERA in eight overall starts since that shining moment against the Dodgers, and he has lasted 4 1/3 or fewer innings in half of those starts and no more than six in any. Newcomb, who’s in his first full season in the majors, was 7-1 with a 2.49 ERA in his first 12 starts and is 5-8 with a 5.22 ERA in 17 starts since.
Newcomb has allowed at least five earned runs four times in his past seven starts and six times in his past 12 starts. His three innings Sunday raised his season total to 158 1/3, surpassing the career-high 157 2/3 innings he threw last season in the majors and Triple A.
“It’s just more mentality, I’ve just got to get out there and get after guys,” Newcomb said. “Not worry too much about what else is going on as far as what’s working and what’s not and just get after people. Physically, I feel good. I think maybe mentally, just looking back and thinking about how the season’s gone and everything. That’s definitely been an adjustment.”
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Flowers also doesn’t think physical fatigue has undermined Newcomb lately.
“I think he’s still trying to figure out how to be consistent with everything he’s doing,” the veteran catcher said. “Even early on in the season there were still some of these ups and downs along these same lines — having a hard time getting ahead of guys, having a hard time getting off-speed in there for strikes. Those are important things to be able to expand the zone and get some swings, get a lot of ground balls and early contact later on.”
While it would take a severe collapse for the Braves to miss the playoffs this season, it wouldn’t take many more losses to fritter away the home-field advantage they would have if the postseason started today. And even though the Braves have played better on the road, they say they want badly to secure home-field advantage for at least the first round of the postseason.
“Yeah, home-field advantage is huge,” Markakis said. “Not just in baseball but all sports. Home-field advantage really helps out the home team. You get last crack at (batting), and you usually have got 45, 50,0000 people on your side. So it’s definitely huge. But we’ve got to worry about the bigger picture and the bigger things, and that’s first of all getting there and finishing up strong.”
“Obviously it would be (important),” Freeman said. “It’s very hard for me to think about playoffs right now and answering these questions, but obviously you want to play in front of your home crowd and have them on your side when things are going right. So if that were the case, we’d love to have home-field advantage.”
(Photo of Bryce Harper, front, and Sean Newcomb: Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports)