The Braves put an exclamation point on their first half sweeping the Diamondbacks in a series that marked the midpoint of the season. Improving their home record to an MLB best 28-11, the series sweep was a much needed reprieve from their mediocre June performance.
The Braves will enjoy a day off before starting a three-game set against baseball's worst team, the Miami Marlins, then travel to Philadelphia for three, Miami for three, and finally come back home to host Cincinnati for four games leading up to the MLB All-Star break. Traditionally, the ASB marks the midpoint of the season, but the Braves will have already played 95 games by this point, nearly 60% of their entire schedule.
Before we close the book on June, let's look at the good and the bad. The pitching staff did a great job keeping games close, Julio Teheran and Kris Medlen in particular. The top-end of the bullpen performed very well. Jason Heyward, BJ Upton, and Dan Uggla rebounded from their slow starts while Freddie Freeman continued to stake his claim as the team's most consistent contributor at the plate.
Unfortunately Justin Upton seems to have used all his power during the season's first month, a topic FanGraphs' Chis Cwik wrote about today, and Andrelton Simmons on-base issues continued. Mike Minor and Paul Maholm had some rough starts, and the bullpen's lack of depth is becoming increasingly clear with the recent performances of Gearrin/Varvaro/Avilan. To compound these issues, the Braves lost Ramiro Pena to shoulder surgery and Evan Gattis to an oblique injury. Pena's season (and possibly his career in Atlanta) is over, and Gattis has yet to resume baseball activities despite the injury occurring nearly two weeks ago. The strength of the Braves' bench, so apparent in many games, has taken a huge hit with these losses and Tyler Pastornicky/Paul Janish aren't even close to being able to fill that void.
Looking ahead the Braves seem sure to make a move for a reliever, and that may be the extent of their dealings. Many Braves fans seem to think Paul Maholm could or should be traded, but the likelihood of that happening (as small as it was) died off with Beachy's setback. Given the performance of the starting staff, Beachy coming back into a bullpen role is starting to look more likely anyway, and for all we know, that could have been the Braves' intentions all along. Pairing his return with the acquisition of a high-leverage LHP, the bullpen's depth issues could be almost completely nullified. The positional starters are set, and modifying the lineup to an optimal point would be a good idea, although the potential gains are marginal. Continuing to hit the team's lowest OBP producer and least powerful bat at the top of the lineup, and giving him the most at-bats, seems like a bad idea. At this point it seems if this were going to change, it would have changed by now. The fact that it hasn't is utterly bewildering to the author.
After the ASB, the Braves will play only 19 games against teams that (as of this writing) have a record over .500, and nine of those games are against the Nationals (the others are split between St. Louis and Cleveland). 28 of those games come against some mixture of the Mets, Marlins, White Sox, Brewers, and Cubs, who along with the Astros form a who's who of baseball's worst teams. That coupled with a six and a half game lead over a Nationals team that has yet to really play to the level many thought them capable of should ease any anxieties one may have over the second-half direction of this team.
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