Braves Victory Important For Many Reasons

Hello again and welcome from the land that Spring forgot, southeast Michigan, where the rain continues to fall and the temperatures are slow to heat up.

Speaking of heating up, that’s exactly what the Braves bats started to do Saturday night in the 7-6, 13 inning victory over the Reds in Atlanta.

In my opinion, tonight’s win was important for reasons both obvious and perhaps not-so-obvious. First and foremost, the win allowed the Braves to keep pace with the Phillies, remaining 4 and 1/2 games behind as the Phillies also won, taking advantage of the Mets’ bullpen in the process.

While the Braves place in the current standings is critical, it may be more critical that the Braves exceeded 10 hits in a game for the first time since another extra-inning affair on May 21st. Ten hits is a sort-of a team “Mendoza Line” to me, as 10 hits in a regulation game will keep your team batting average over .250 (and yes, I know that the normal Mendoza line is thought of as .200, even though Mario Mendoza actually hit .215 on his career). The fact that the Braves have been going a week between occurrences is very telling. Combined with the surprisingly low number of walks for the team, wins have happened mainly due to strong pitching and or home runs. If the hitting for average can continue, it is almost a certainty that the winning percentage will improve, given the level of pitching on the team. Tonight, too, almost everyone, with the notable exception of Dan Uggla, joined the hit parade. The probability of scoring is much higher when your hits are spread out, as it mitigates the need for good luck in the “clutch”.

Even more so, tonight’s win showed that the Braves can win on a night when their starting pitching is not up to par. As those who have watched closely will attest, that has not been the case very often this year. And tonight the team picked itself up after Derek Lowe squandered a 5-0 lead, coming back from a 6-5 deficit to win on Chipper Jones walk-off single in the 13th.

Finally, the win tonight came on a night where the second-tier of the bullpen had to be relied upon. Scott Linebrink and Cristhian Martinez combined for 4 and 2/3 innings of solid relief, allowing only one run to score. Jonny Venters and Craig Kimbrel were untouched, doing their normal quality jobs.

A couple of side notes in closing. First, Braves fans need to thank Reds reliever Carlos Fisher for his part in the win. With Martin Prado at bat and being given the bunt sign, Fisher couldn’t throw strikes and walked Prado. As such, the bat was not taken out of Chipper’s hands as would have almost certainly happened had the sacrifice bunt been successful which would have left first base open. Chipper then came through with the game-winning single. Second, would Fredi please step up and ban the “dirt in the face” celebrations before someone gets hurt? Both McCann and Jones have stated on the air that they couldn’t see for the dirt in their eyes after their walk-off hits. I’m all for fun, but let’s figure out a better way of celebrating, OK?

Time to celebrate for me now! Does anyone else have anything to add?