The 89th Major League All-Star Star game is 28 days away, scheduled for July 17 at Nationals Park in Washington.
Unless the Atlanta Braves have a meltdown of epic proportions between now and then, they easily could have three or more starters on the National League’s team, which would, at least for the moment, be altogether fitting for a Braves bunch that woke up Monday morning tied with the Milwaukee Brewers for the NL’s best record at 42-29.
That’s right. Not even the surging Chicago Cubs – though suddenly playing like a team with the majors’ third highest payroll ($183 million) – were as good as the Braves or the Brewers at Monday’s dawn, the Cubbies arriving for Monday night’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers with a 40-28 mark.
And to think that Las Vegas predicted in late March that Atlanta’s record would be no better than 75-87 this season. That still could happen, of course. But it would require the Bravos going 33-58 from this point forward, which seems at least as unlikely as anyone predicting in March that they would stand atop the NL East today.
Then again, Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman – who currently leads all NL All-Star vote getters with more than 1.4 million votes – did tell anyone willing to listen back then: “It feels a lot different (this spring). You want to see that light at the end of the tunnel, and you can almost touch it now with your hands. We’re so close.”