Braves: Postseason Structure Does no Favors for Rotation Woes

With the MLB postseason not having any off days between games that could certainly put the Atlanta Braves at a disadvantage.

It’s certainly obvious that the Atlanta Braves starting rotation is their one are of weakness, and it’s a big weakness.

They’re hoping to get Max Fried and Cole Hamels back healthy this week and get them ready for the postseason. But even that seems less than hopeful right now.

And the news today on how MLB plans to structure the postseason will certainly hamper the Braves’ chances of winning because there are no off days in the DS and CS.

Last year we saw the Washington Nationals take advantage of off days by being able to allow their starters work on short rest and pitch out of the bullpen.

They basically had five or six pitchers they could count on and rode them to a World Series championship.

It will be a lot hard to do that this year without those off days for travel after games two and five.

A lot of times in a five-game series you could have your ace go in game one and possibly even bring him back on three days rest for game four, but at the very least you could use him again in a game five.

You probably won’t see teams doing that this year as you’d have to bring your ace back on just three days rest to pitch games one and five.

In a lot of ways this is a good thing and something I think they should consider in future postseason formats because it forces a team to use it’s entire team and starting rotation.

I’m not taking anything away from the Nationals last year, the plan Davey Martinez drew up was perfect, but I’m not sure they have the same success without those off days.

They likely would have had to use more of their bullpen, which was their greatest area of weakness. But they still would have had one of the best and deepest starting rotations in baseball.

And that’s exactly what the Braves don’t have right now and what worries me the most about them in the postseason, especially with the news of no off days.

It won’t matter much in the Wild Card series as you were going to need three starters to get through that anyway.

But once we get into the division and championship series rounds, the Braves will need five starters.

Right now, we’re hoping we two in Fried and Anderson. And then we’re likely counting on a couple of young guys in Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright.

Perhaps Mike Foltynewicz has another late-season resurgence in him. If not, we could see Josh Tomlin starting a game for the Braves in the postseason. Or perhaps they go with a bullpen game.

It might not make much a difference in the end, the best team will still come out on top, but it certainly seems like having no off days and having to use five starters in the DS and CS is a detriment to the Braves right now.