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Spud2nique wrote::cry: what a beautiful Cinderella storybook ending!

What an awesome season and a fitting end. 26 long years. This one was special.

Probably won’t fully hit me till tomorrow.

HMFFL wrote:The feeling of winning the World Series is so many different emotions. We did it Braves fans! We actually won the world series.



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HMFFL wrote:The Braves are a miracle, a dream and an embarrassment rolled into one

Opinion by Terence Moore

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/03/opinions/atlanta-braves-world-series-miracle-embarrassment-moore/index.html

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Atlanta Used One Simple Trick to Win a Shocking World Series Championship

Despite winning fewer regular-season games than any other team in the 2021 playoff field, Atlanta capitalized on a weak division and impactful deadline deals to do what so many other superior predecessors could not. The lesson? Try.



If ever a future baseball fan needs a reminder of the randomness inherent in the sport’s postseason, if ever they want a prototypical example of playoff strangeness, they need look no further than the story of this 2021 Atlanta club.

See, Atlanta shouldn’t have come anywhere near this World Series trophy. Its best player tore his ACL; its best young pitcher missed the entire season after tearing his Achilles twice. It finished the regular season with a mere 88-73 record. It had more losses than wins at the end of July.

Atlanta went just 43-42 against teams outside its division and, within the division, feasted on dreadful opposition: No other NL East team finished with a positive run differential. In any other division, Atlanta would have been well out of contention with a losing record at the end of July.



But in the NL East, Atlanta still had a dream, and GM Alex Anthopoulos made a medley of minor moves to upgrade the roster for the stretch run. He traded for Joc Pederson on July 15 and Soler, Eddie Rosario, and Adam Duvall on July 30. At that point, according to the FanGraphs playoff odds, Atlanta had less than a 10 percent chance of making the playoffs and less than a 1 percent chance of winning the World Series.

Spoiler:

Yet there is no overstating just how much those trades mattered, and just how much their targets accomplished. In the playoffs, the outfield quartet combined for a .270/.339/.505 batting line. In other words, against the higher-caliber pitching of the postseason, Atlanta’s four new outfielders were collectively as productive at the plate as Manny Machado or Nelson Cruz were in the regular season.

The quartet was responsible for 56 percent of the team’s postseason RBIs (36 of 64) and 52 percent of its home runs (12 of 23). And its members contributed many of Atlanta’s most important hits along the way:

• Pederson crushed two pinch-hit homers—one a game-winner—in two games to start the playoff run.
  
• Soler led off Game 1 of the World Series with a homer, then blasted the winning dingers in games 4 and 6, en route to winning series MVP honors.
  
• Duvall opened the scoring in Game 5 of the World Series with a first-inning grand slam.
  
• And Rosario, most of all, paced the lineup all postseason long, producing a bonkers .383/.456/.617 slash line. His biggest hit came in Game 6 of the NLCS, when his tiebreaking three-run homer against Walker Buehler sent Atlanta to the World Series.

Thanks to this scorching foursome, surprise contributions from the bullpen, and just enough clutch hits to survive a slew of late-game seesaws, Atlanta weathered seemingly crushing injuries to Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mike Soroka in the regular season, and Charlie Morton in the playoffs. After Morton broke his leg in Game 1 of the World Series, Atlanta had all of two healthy starting pitchers left—but to no ill effect, in the end.

It’s difficult to know, just now, whether this miracle run will influence future team-building principles like the Cubs’ and Astros’ (embrace the tank!) or Dodgers’ (aim for a division title every year!) triumphs have in recent seasons. Would-be contenders want to replicate juggernauts. They don’t want to replicate a team that wins 88 games and reaches the postseason only because of geographic luck.

Atlanta isn’t the only team to win the World Series after a relatively mediocre regular season. The 2006 Cardinals won 83 games, the 1987 Twins 85, the 2000 Yankees 87, and the 2014 Giants 88. This kind of outlier occurs about once a decade—and might soon grow more common, if MLB expands its playoff field as desired.

Atlanta wasn’t the majors’ best team from April to September; it wasn’t all that close. It merely tried to win, and then it did. That’s a reason for a trophy, and for the other 29 clubs to take note.

HMFFL wrote:Video: Tyler Matzek Nearly Arrested During Championship Parade in Atlanta

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https://www.si.com/.amp/mlb/2021/11/05/braves-tyler-matzek-nearly-arrested-during-championship-parade-atlanta

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