The Braves Found Philadelphia’s Weakness. The Hard Part Is Reaching It.

Philadelphia’s starters held Atlanta to five runs in 28 innings. Its relievers surrendered seven in eight, and that distinction could define a postseason rematch.

To measure the Earth, Eratosthenes of Cyrene needed one well, one shadow and a little geometry.

At noon on the summer solstice, the sun reached the bottom of a well in Syene without casting a shadow. Roughly 500 miles away in Alexandria, it struck a vertical object at an angle of approximately 7.2 degrees—one-fiftieth of a circle. Eratosthenes multiplied the distance between the cities by 50 and, more than 2,200 years ago, produced a remarkably accurate estimate of the Earth’s circumference.

One observation told him very little. The difference between the two revealed the shape of the entire planet.

The Braves came as close as baseball allows to constructing a controlled experiment this weekend. The opponent remained the same. The ballpark remained the same. Even the caliber of starting pitching remained remarkably consistent. One variable changed: whether Atlanta could force Philadelphia’s starter to surrender the baseball.

Over four games, they faced two dramatically different versions of the same pitching staff. Phillies starters allowed five earned runs in 28 innings. Their relievers allowed seven in eight.

Philadelphia’s rotation looked capable of ending Atlanta’s postseason. Its bullpen may be the reason Atlanta can end Philadelphia’s.

The Braves found the Phillies’ weakness. The hard part is reaching it.

Let’s talk about it.

The difference between Sunday and Monday

Aaron Nola’s game three start and Jesús Luzardo’s game four outing started off similarly - Atlanta’s offense being held at bay for six innings, while a Braves starter battled them blow for blow.

But after seven innings, the two games diverged.

After Nola threw 93 pitches and navigated around four hits and a walk, Philadelphia handed the game to the bullpen. And Ronald Acuña Jr. happened.

Luzardo, by contrast, had allowed just two baserunners (one single, one HBP) and was sitting at only 84 pitches. He stayed in the game and polished off a 109-pitch shutout.

Atlanta got the win when they faced the Philly bullpen on Sunday, but lost when the starter went the distance on Monday. On the weekend, Philadelphia starters had a 1.61 ERA in 28 innings, but the bullpen had a 7.88 ERA in their eight frames.

Philadelphia’s rotation created an October-sized problem

Philly has one of baseball’s best rotations, if not the best. The foursome of Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, and Jesús Luzardo allowed just five earned runs in 28 innings.

Philadelphia’s staff stymied Atlanta overall: the Braves hit .194/.245/.349 with 37 strikeouts and eight walks during the series, with the rotation responsible for most of that success. And even when the Braves had an opportunity to do damage, those starters found ways to get out of the jams - Wheeler hung a NOBLETIGER¹ on the Braves in Saturday’s first inning, while Nola put two on in Sunday’s sixth inning and held the Braves to only a single run, scoring on a sacrifice fly.

And not only did Philly starters hold their own against Atlanta, but they also did it in dominant fashion at times - Luzardo’s complete-game shutout required 109 pitches.

But the Braves still came away with two wins on the weekend because all four Philadelphia starters couldn’t go the distance.

The game changed whenever the bullpen appeared

As good as Philly’s starters were, their bullpen was…not, and it was a different reliever every time.

Mauricio Dubón got the best of Orion Kerkering on Friday, baiting the youngster into doubling up on his vaunted sweeper in the zone and getting a two-run insurance homer out of it.

Austin Riley got the best of righty Jonathan Bowlan on Saturday, laying off multiple two-strike sliders down and away and being rewarded with the third of three fastballs up and away, popping a solo shot to left-center in the 7th inning.

That same theme - a Philly reliever repeating a pitch location - came up for Ronald Acuña Jr. on Sunday. Flamethrowing youngster Alex McFarlane threw seven consecutive fastballs to Ronald, all but one elevated in the zone, and Acuña dialed in his timing before finally obliterating the last one, tying the game at 4-4 in the 8th inning.

And with a three-run lead now squandered, Austin Riley watched the first two batters of the 9th inning get nothing but splitters from closer Jhoan Duran before ambushing the first one he saw for the game-winning RBI triple.

Four different relievers, with different pitch mixes, but the same result.

“Bad bullpen” is too simplistic

Let’s be clear: Philly’s bullpen has not been bad this year. Their 4.27 ERA is 19th in baseball, and it’s anchored by some fantastic performances - Duran has a 1.72 ERA, the 6th-best ERA among qualified relievers.

But even closers aren’t perfect, and the bridge from the starters to Duran is the problem.

And there is Atlanta’s opening.

The Braves advantage is not that every Phillies reliever is bad. It is that the Braves possess more ways to cover the middle and late innings without exposing their weakest arm.

Reaching that bridge is the hard part

The Braves do not have an especially aggressive offense, if you’re measuring aggressiveness by “the amount of time each plate appearance lasts.”

Atlanta has seen 3.888 pitches per plate appearance this season, ranking 16th in MLB. Since the All-Star break, that figure has barely moved: 3.864, ranking 19th.

Its walk rate tells a different story. The Braves’ 7.7 percent mark ranks 28th for the season, while their 7.3 percent second-half rate ranks 29th.

| Period      | Braves P/PA | MLB avg. | MLB rank | Braves BB% | MLB avg. | MLB rank |
| ----------- | ----------: | -------: | -------: | ---------: | -------: | -------: |
| Full season |       3.888 |    3.886 |     16th |       7.7% |     8.9% |     28th |
| Since ASB   |       3.864 |    3.891 |     19th |       7.3% |     8.8% |     29th |

And the delta between seeing a lot of pitches but not drawing a lot of walks matters. A six-pitch out may require additional work from a starter, but it still moves him one-third of the way through another inning. A walk runs up the pitch count without resulting in an out, forcing him to retire another hitter and giving the lineup another opportunity to turn over. It also lets the eventual extra-base hit or home run potentially produce multiple runs, not just one.

Walks aren’t just extra baserunners. They’re pitch count, too.

Atlanta’s plate appearances are lasting a league-average number of pitches, but too few are producing the type of outcome that compounds a starter’s workload. That helps explain how the Braves can make Philadelphia’s starters work without necessarily forcing manager Don Mattingly to remove them.

The Phillies’ bullpen may be vulnerable, but Atlanta cannot exploit a bullpen it never forces into the game.

If you could re-run the weekend series - and they will this weekend - there are a few changes that Braves hitters need to make to more reliably be able to exploit Philly’s structurally unsound bridge.

• Stop donating early-count outs.

I’m a big believer in ambushing pitches early in an at-bat, especially against a struggling starter that’s on the ropes. Keep the pressure up and don’t let them breathe.

But Atlanta took that approach a bit too far this weekend.

Of Atlanta’s 129 official at-bats in Philadelphia, 46 ended in outs within the first three pitches. That’s 35.7 percent, and the rate reached 50 percent during Jesús Luzardo’s complete-game shutout.

This isn’t me imploring the Braves to “work the count”; they frequently gave Philadelphia an out before an at-bat had any opportunity to meaningfully inflate the pitcher’s workload.

And when they did push the pitch count up? Well, you saw the positives of extending the at-bats in the middle two games.

Philly finally pulled the plug Sunday on Nola after the veteran hit the 93-pitch mark through seven, giving the Braves time to mount their comeback against the relief bridge. But imagine where Nola’s pitch count would have been if not for Mike Yastrzemski working a 14-pitch at-bat in the third inning? 21.5% of all of Nola’s pitches on Sunday were thrown to Yastrzemski (20/93), and he represented just two of the 25 batters faced by the righty starter.

Similarly, the Braves were able to get Wheeler on the bench after six innings on Saturday thanks to 20-plus pitches in both the 4th and 5th. The 4th inning was only four batters for Atlanta, but the Ozzie Albies groundout and the Austin Riley strikeout were both on six pitches, with Dom Smith (five-pitch walk) and Mauricio Dubón (four-pitch groundout) taking their sweet time, as well. The 5th was more of the same, with the side striking out in order, but with the final two requiring nine pitches (Drake Baldwin) and eight pitches (Ronald Acuña Jr.).

Trim two pitches off of any three of those at-bats and Wheeler’s probably back out for the seventh instead of being pulled at 95 pitches.

• Turn deep counts into baserunners

Ha-Seong Kim’s rarely “won” his at-bats in the second-half. He’s 6-for-24 in his last seven games, with one walk to seven strikeouts, and has only one extra-base hit in that span. But he is seeing 4.73 pitches per plate appearance. He’s working deep counts, even if he’s not winning them just yet. Lane Thomas, acquired to hit lefties but relegated to the bench during an unusually long stretch against righty starters, is seeing 4.10 P/PA and pairing that with a 9.8% post-ASB walk rate.

By contrast, both Michael Harris II and Mauricio Dubón are seeing barely 3.5 pitches per plate appearance, a number that has them ranked in the 200s among hitters with at least 100 second-half plate appearances. Their post-ASB walk rates of 2.6% and 3.5% reflect that lack of patience, with neither hitter having the margin for a contact slump down the stretch.

• Make the sweepers beneath the zone earn chases.

This might be recency bias, but Luzardo’s sweeper on Sunday was absurdly effective. He picked up 12 whiffs in 22 swings, but got those swings despite the pitch being in the zone only 29% of the time. A 55% chase rate just isn’t sustainable against any pitch, never mind one as consistently unhittable as Luzardo’s sweeper.

Do these three things often enough, and opponents must choose between pushing the starter past his comfortable workload or exposing the middle relief.

Part of the reason Atlanta got their opportunities against the bullpen on Saturday and Sunday, as detailed above, was due to some “successful” innings for Philly starters still having a high pitch count.

The sooner Atlanta can get that starter out of the game, the more time they have to work their late-inning magic. The Braves are tied for 2nd in homers across a game’s final three innings of regulation with 62, their 218 runs in innings 7-9 is tied for 5th with Milwaukee, and they have the third-best slug at .427.

Atlanta’s bullpen may be its clearest October advantage

Under pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, the Braves have embraced length in their bullpen. Atlanta’s carrying five different multi-inning relievers, with Didier Fuentes (always) and Victor Mederos (sometimes) working in leverage situations and the trio of Ray Kerr, Brent Suter, and Elieser Hernández capable of rotating through as long men.

The pending return of Reynaldo López this week to start on Wednesday against Tampa will temporarily relegate an ailing Bryce Elder to a bullpen role for a week or so, although I’m still convinced he needs to go on the IL. If they’re concerned enough about his balky knee to ask him to embrace a role he’s never filled just to lessen his workload, placing him on the IL is the better move. More on this once the move’s official.

When you combine that quintet with closer Raisel Iglesias and lefty setup men Dylan Lee and Dylan Dodd, the Braves have a fully armed and operational eight-man bullpen that can fill a multitude of roles: absorb a short start, cover multiple innings or match up late. Philadelphia, by contrast, is more dependent upon establishing a clean path to Duran.

The Braves may not have to beat Philadelphia’s rotation to win a postseason series. But they do have to make those starters surrender the baseball.

1. No Outs, Bases Loaded, Ending with Team Incapable of Getting Easy Run