Let’s return to June 29, sometime in the late afternoon, when the Atlanta Braves were about to play the Cardinals in St. Louis to start a 10-game road trip.
With Atlanta having lost five of its previous seven games, had you told anyone in Braves Nation that evening that their heroes would finish the trip with a 5-5 record against the Cards, New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers, they would have snapped it up quicker than a free chili dog and Frosted Orange from the Varsity.
But then Atlanta had to go and sweep the Cards before knocking off the Bronx Bombers in the 11th inning last Monday on a Ronald Acuna Jr. home run, and suddenly it appeared as if the Braves could go 7-3 or 8-2 against this murderer’s row of a road trip. Suddenly it looked as if these guys might have a realistic chance to move 20 games over .500 by next week’s All-Star break.
Unfortunately, that’s also when the baseball gods said, “Whoa, young fellas. Let’s dial this dream back a bit. You’re still the Baby Braves 2.0. You’ve got more peach fuzz on your cheeks than a South Georgia orchard. The Yanks and Brewers are two of the four best teams in baseball right now, along with Boston and Houston. You’re good, but you’re far from great. Reality is about to bite and bite hard.”
And so it did. The Yankees won their last two games against the Braves by a combined score of 14-7. The Brewers took three of four, including Sunday’s 10-3 rout. That means Atlanta will return home for Tuesday’s two-game visit from Toronto having not only lost five of its past six, but 10 of its past 17.