The Braves sent Pablo Sandoval to Cleveland, and Cleveland immediately cut him loose the team had just wanted to rid itself of the rest of Rosario’s salary for the season. Rosario had some fine years in Minnesota, but was underwhelming after signing a one-year deal with Cleveland in the offseason. Revived in Atlanta, Soler popped 14 homers in 55 games, produced a 128 OPS+ and a 1.0 bWAR. It was well known he was available, and let's just say the Braves didn’t exactly have to engage in a bidding war for his services. 288 on-base percentage, 13 homers, a minus-1.4 bWAR and a 76 OPS+. Nobody will ever forget the mammoth homer Soler hit out of the ballpark in Game 6. MORE: World Series Game 6, as it happened But Ozuna struggled mightily, then got hurt and then his domestic violence arrest ended his season, very rightly so. In any other season, losing a player who finished sixth in the MVP race the previous year would be the worse loss. 500 against was the Cardinals, and those games were all before St. The only playoff team the Braves were above. They were also 0-6 against a Blue Jays team that won 91 games but missed October. “They found their confidence in terms of going out there every day and being good instead of having some days good and some days bad,” Glavine said.ĭuring the regular season, Atlanta was 2-4 against the Dodgers, 1-3 against the Red Sox, 1-3 against the Yankees, 1-2 against the Rays and 3-3 against the Giants. Unlike the outfield revival, the improvement wasn’t a result of trade-deadline additions the only reliever added, Richard Rodriguez, was fine but hasn’t been on the postseason roster in any round. In the second half the relievers collectively posted a 3.24 ERA. The relievers, as a group, had a 4.58 ERA in the first half. “I know from doing games myself, the games that the Braves lost, the bullpen struggled badly, and the game they won, the bullpen was really good.” “They had their ups and downs the first part of the year,” Hall of Famer Tom Glavine, who works as an analyst on the Ballys Sports Southeast broadcasts, told Sporting News in a phone interview over the weekend. But not nearly enough has been said about the improvement of the bullpen as a group. Much has been made of the performance of the outfielders the Braves traded for, and rightly so. The Rangers (who finished with 102 losses) and Marlins (95) were the only other two teams who could claim that dubious honor at the time, in the season’s fourth month. 6, when they beat the Nationals 8-4 at home, right after they finished a sweep of the Cardinals. “There have been times you feel like we’re going to break out, and the next day it just doesn’t happen.”Ĥ. “It’s just been tough to get on a roll,” Dansby Swanson told SN near the end of that bizarre streak. They were two games below, then three games below, then two below, then three below and so on and so forth. They lost the last game of the first half and the first game of the second half, then rattled off an incredible streak of 18 consecutive games where they alternated wins and losses (a suspended game completed later in the season technically messed up the sequence). The division still seemed possible because the NL East was not good, but advancing in October without their best player? Nah.įOSTER: For these Braves, "wait till next year" now has new, joyous meaning When he went down with a torn ACL in July, that felt like the end of Atlanta’s World Series dreams. He’s the one who could win multiple MVPs in his career. But Acuña is the most talented player in the organization, by far. And we’re just talking about why a World Series title would have been unexpected, not impossible.Ītlanta has lots of talented players, no doubt. The Braves won just 88 games during the regular season every other team won at least 90. It’s not a judgement, just a statement of fact. Today, in the wake of the Braves’ 7-0 clinching win in Game 6, let’s look at 21 reasons why Atlanta’s 2021 World Series title was so very unexpected. Who knows? That’s a conversation for a different time, though, and one that really only lifelong Braves fans can have. This is easily the most unlikely of the four titles. HOUSTON - The Braves are World Series champions again, for the fourth time in franchise history and the second time since they move to Atlanta in 1966.
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