Who said anything about true performance. I'm just saying we haven't been able to beat teams that are worth a crap this year even in the first half, so we were never going to be a .500 or better team long term. Just because our schedule was back loaded with good teams this year doesn't mean we would have wound up .500 if we had perfect health and made no trades (which is silly reasoning anyway, as every team has to deal with injuries). If you want to think having a .500 team is competing by all means go for it, but most years that isn't going to have you doing anything, this year included.
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Who said anything about true performance. I'm just saying we haven't been able to beat teams that are worth a crap this year even in the first half, so we were never going to be a .500 or better team long term. Just because our schedule was back loaded with good teams this year doesn't mean we would have wound up .500 if we had perfect health and made no trades (which is silly reasoning anyway, as every team has to deal with injuries). If you want to think having a .500 team is competing by all means go for it, but most years that isn't going to have you doing anything, this year included.
And you have no basis whatsoever to assume we would not have been .500 had we not made those trades and Freeman was healthy. Because the fact of the matter is that we were in fact a .500 team on July 7, even when Freeman on the DL. It stands to assume with a healthy Freeman and the late additions to the pen, that we would could have certainly remained around .500 mark, where we had been hovering around all season up til that point
Good to see two former Braves pitchers starting Sunday Night Baseball.
We had a relatively easy schedule before the all star break. That's the difference.
And the team was healthy as well. We are losing now because we lost two of our best performers this year and traded a bunch of others. People just don't want to realize it because it goes against everything they said in the offseason. I get it.
Braves1976
It's OVER 5,000!
Plus you have to assume injuries, even in our last division title year we lost Freeman for a time. Which was actually early on and led to Chris Johnson starting more instead of just vs lefties. Of course that combined with CJ's hot start later led to him becoming full-time starter at third and that worked out fine at least that one year.
It has nothing to do with not wanting to realize anything. Injuries are part of the game, period. The Cards have 70 wins and lost their Ace right off the bat along with Holliday for a month and a half. The Mets lost Wright, the Nats have had a ton of injuries. If anything we were far more lucky with injuries than most of the contenders, and we were tremendously lucky with our hitting with RISP. That luck has balanced out and is the other reason we started to dive below .500 before the all star break.
We are losing because we are finally playing the hard part of our schedule, we didn't play well against good teams in the first half either, even when we had Freddie, but we had a schedule filled with most of the cream puffs in the league in the first half. The only people not wanting to realize something are those claiming we would be contending if only Freddie wasn't injured and we kept everyone, which is absurd.
And I have no offseason predictions to protect myself, so couldn't really care less about that side of the equation.
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
Dude, you've reached massive troll proportions with this.
And no one is saying we are better then the Cards or Mets. But you are chalking up our previous record entirely to a weak schedule, and are using our current play as evidence, without making notice of the players we have lost. Also, we played more away games at the start of the season and have more home games to finish the year.
Everyone KNOWS what was going to happen and they are allowed to profess this beliefs without any challenge what so ever. But, someone actually disagrees and we are seen as trolls. That fine Julio.
Nobody KNOWS what would have happen. The facts are we were playing really good baseball and at the point Freeman got hurt the first time we were playing our best baseball and the team was coming together.
And nobody is saying we were a 90 win team either. But, we were a 500 baseball team taht was getting better. There is plenty of reason to believe we could have finished at or above 500.
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
Ok. You're entitled to your opinion. I just don't see what backs it up.
From the last time we were over .500 to when Freddie went down the first time, we were 8-11. If what you mean by playing good baseball is that we swept the Mets to go from 5-11 to 8-11 during that stretch, fine. We swept the Mets. I don't interpret that as a sign that we were about to go on a run to challenge for the division.
So after Fred came back we broke off something like a 3-7. You think that KJ and Uribe were the difference between 3-7 and 6-4? We were about a -21 during that period.
I believe in more than just the quantifiable. I believe the team was building momentum around one of the best offensive players in baseball...and yes that is what Freeman is. When someone like that is taken out of the lineup it affects more than just his production alone. Teams can play above their ability for long periods of time. That happens almost every single year and it looked like the Braves were doing just that. The bullpen was finally getting it together and I always felt the starting rotation (Teheran/Wood) were going to improve as teh season progressed.
I know you and most on this board won't agree with me. I've never been afraid to be alone in an argument.
Given how much better than everyone else is in the NL I don't really see why not. It's not like the AL where Josh Donaldson is fairly close in value to Trout, the only person close to Harper is Goldy, who is on a worse team. Posey I suppose, but they aren't making the playoffs right now either.
We were 3 games below .500 when Freeman went down with injury the first time, and we were 5 games below .500 at the point we traded Uribe and KJ. We then proceeded to go another 4 games below .500 after getting Freddie back. I'm not just using our current play as evidence, I'm using our play when we had our entire team as evidence. If we were below .500 when we had everyone and were playing the weaker part of the schedule, what on earth sort of justification could there be to think we would be at .500 or better once we started playing a ton of teams legit in the running for playoff spots?
The team was starting to play very well and the reason we were so many games under 500 was the bullpen which was vastly improved from the few weeks prior and would have continued to get better as the season progressed.