https://tomahawktake.com/2020/10/19/atlanta-braves-nothing-ashamed-2020-season/
by Jake Mastrioanni
Even though the season didn’t end the way we hoped, the Atlanta Braves have nothing to be ashamed of from their 2020 season.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find another team that suffered more significant injuries and setbacks as the Atlanta Braves did in 2020.
It’s been well documented how only one of the five starting pitchers they envisioned being in the starting rotation made it to the postseason.
Once Mike Soroka went down I felt like this team had no shot in the postseason.
And yet guys like Ian Anderson, Kyle Wright, and Bryse Wilson stepped up to give us huge starts in the postseason.
Not only that, but they gave us a glimpse of what this team could look like at full strength in the future.
If the Braves go into the postseason next year with a healthy rotation of Soroka, Fried, Anderson, and Wright I feel really confident about our chances of winning a World Series.
But it wasn’t just the pitching that the Braves had to battle through this season, they played the majority of the regular season with two of their best players battling wrist injuries in Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies.
As we know from Freddie Freeman in the past, the only way you fully recover from that injury is with a lot of rest. The season didn’t afford that for them, and I feel pretty confident in saying that Acuna’s wrist was hurting a lot more than he was letting on in the postseason.
And our offense is just not the same when Acuna isn’t getting on base, and he just wasn’t able to do that enough in the last three games of the NLCS.
Yes, these are excuses. And yes it hurts to blow a 3-1 lead.
But if we’re being honest, the Dodgers were just a better team and they proved that by beating us three games in a row.
The one thing that I hope the Braves take away from this series is the offensive approach of the Dodgers in the postseason.
It was pretty clear the Braves hitters were just trying to hit home runs every time they went up, and that type of offense just doesn’t work against good pitching in the postseason.
Yes, the Dodgers hit their fair share of home runs, but it’s how they did it that was so impressive. The deciding home runs from Kike Hernandez and Cody Bellinger both came at the end of long at-bats after they fouled off some tough pitches.
The Braves hitters just don’t battle like that. There were too many times in those last three games were they got out in the first three pitches of an at-bat.
Hopefully they learn from that and their philosophy changes a bit next season.
But overall, with everything this team went through in 2020, to push the best team in baseball to a game seven in the NLCS was really impressive.
I know Braves fans are tired of hearing the “next year” statement, and so am I. But the fact is, this team is still very young and will have plenty of more chances in the coming years.
But overall, with everything this team went through in 2020, to push the best team in baseball to a game seven in the NLCS was really impressive.
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