Braves Will Need to Show Their Resilience After Tough Game 3 Loss
There is no doubt that the Game 3 loss was a gut punch to the Atlanta Braves and the fanbase. But this team has responded to gut punches all year.
Everything seemed to be going the way of the Atlanta Braves threw the first two-plus games in the NLCS. That is until that dreadful eighth inning in Game 3.
I’m not going to lie, I try not to get too emotionally involved in this game, but that one stung.
It looked like the Braves were going to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the series over the powerful Los Angeles Dodgers, but with one swing of the bat from Cody Bellinger, it now seems like we’re in another dogfight.
This is just the latest punch to the gut among numerous ones for this team in 2021.
From losing their best player in Ronald Acuna Jr., to struggling to get over .500 for most of the season, and losing 31 games by one run — second-most in all of baseball.
This team knows how to handle a gut punch.
How do the Braves Respond?
This team has responded every time they’ve been kicked down this year. When a lot of people — including myself — thought this team was dead in the water, they proved everyone wrong.
And we’ve seen this script before after being up 2-0 and 3-1 in the NLCS last year to this same Dodgers team.
Yet, here they are again.
While it’d be great to have a starter you trust going in Game 4 to give a great response, the Braves don’t have that luxury.
Game 4 was always going to be a game that heavily favored the Dodgers.
But more than anything, I just want to see how they respond emotionally. Do they continue to fight and make this a close game even though it probably shouldn’t be on paper with Atlant using a bullpen game, or do they let the sting of Bellinger’s home run continue to haunt them?
I want to believe this team is different, that the struggles they’ve gone through this year have made them mentally tough enough to endure yet another setback.
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We won’t actually know until we see how they respond in games four and five. The goal coming into Los Angeles was to win one of three games and come back home with a chance to clinch the series. That’s still within our grasp, but they can’t let game three carry over into the rest of the series.