Be careful. Uribe's a spoiler.
— excitable honky (@excitablehonky) October 8, 2013
Sure enough, you know how that turned out:
Juan Uribe's with a HUGE 2-run home run giving the #Dodgers the 4-3 lead over the #Braves in the bottom of the 8th #postsesason
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 8, 2013
And with that, the Braves suffered yet another immediate exit from the playoffs, leading to immediate criticism that Fredi Gonzalez should have brought in Craig Kimbrel for a two-inning save and that David Carpenter was somehow representative of a bullpen that couldn't be trusted. Hindsight, as the old saying goes, is always 20/20. Truth be told, there's no guarantee Kimbrel would have been able to get six outs instead of three, and Carpenter had earned his opportunity to be entrusted with the eighth inning opportunity.
And beyond the inevitable letdown of another first-round ouster, there appears to be the additional fact that just like we said goodbye to Chipper last year and Bobby two years before that, it seems likely that we may have seen Brian McCann in an Atlanta uniform for the last time too. While the Braves catcher made innumerable contributions to the team over the year and I suspected he would step up to become the new team leader, McCann instead this year became more responsible for helping Atlanta earn the reputation of the "baseball police" in MLB. Hopefully next year will provide more reasons for the team to be more like those clubs accused of celebrating too much, you know, the ones that actually advance in the playoffs.
I speculated that perhaps the only other team that can rival the Braves' postseason futility would be the Oakland Athletics, a similarly regular playoff team who can never seem to win a series. Still, Atlanta is largely considered an immediate exit, and what's more, it still feels like most people hate them. With the ongoing push to change the name of the Washington Redskins, I'm fairly confident that the tomahawk chop used by fans of the Braves is almost certainly going to be one of the next offensive displays to end up in the crosshairs of Native American groups. In other words, I don't feel like this team is going to become popular any time soon, McCann on the roster or not. In a sense, I'll continue to savor that sort of distaste for this team. I'm willing to say it's been going strong among most people I know or run into for about 20 years now.
Still, it is hard not to view this past season as something of a success, what with the team rather easily winning a division title that most every expert considered to be a forgone conclusion for the Washington Nationals. Hell, even the Nats themselves probably considered that a shoo-in. So there's reasons to be proud of this year's Braves team, even if they once again failed to get very far once the playoffs began.
As always, I ask myself if there's reason to be optimistic going forward. And I would say there is. Even if McCann jumps ship, as expected, there appears to be yet another catching prospect the team can turn to in Christian Bethancourt, who could be another McCann or he could be another Johnny Estrada. Still, there's concern about whether B.J. Upton can rebound next year and live up to his very costly contract. Ditto for Dan Uggla.
But more than anything, the playoffs probably proved that there's still a real need for a true, dominant starter in the team's rotation. There's some hope that maybe Brandon Beachy can be that guy, but the injury concerns still linger. It will be another interesting off-season for the Atlanta front office to make moves that can hopefully correct some of the team's issues. While I can now realistically envision this team continuing to contend for a division title going forward, I fear that I'm still pessimistic about ever becoming optimistic for the Braves doing much more than that.
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