AUTiger7222
Called Up to the Major Leagues
Niners didn't say we sucked. He just doesn't buy that we were "scary good". In honesty, we weren't scary good. We had a couple of short bursts of excellent baseball surrounded by mediocrity. Now, if we rebound at 2nd base and CF, we certainly could be a 'scary good' team and see an incredible fight to the finish with Washington. And for the record, I think the Nats will rebound and have a terrific season.
The Braves had a span last year where they went 25-7 which included a 14 game winning streak. Then there was the 14-1 start. That's two incredible stretches of play. Posting a 39-8 record in a 47 game stretch (almost a 1/3 of the season even if those stretches were split up) is nothing to sneeze at. That just shows how incredible and scary good the Braves can be when things are going well.
But seriously, if you're going to hold that against the Braves and say that they were a mediocre team aside from those 2 stretches of play then you've got to say that about every team that was in the playoffs. Because the truth is, aside from a couple of great stretches of play every team is a mediocre team. No team goes the whole season winning just 2 out of every 3 games without no stretches of winning 12 of 16 or bad stretches of losing 8 of 12. I counted it up once and if I remember correctly, I ended up with 108 wins by doing that and 108 wins very rarely happens. Most playoff teams end up with 90-95 wins. So that means there has to be some bad stretches of play in there somewhere followed by some great stretches of play to erase the bad stretches of play and the rest of the time the team is just a .500 baseball team. It's the way baseball works when you play that many games.