Major League Baseball

September slump all too familiar for Braves' offense

Published Sep. 16, 2014 12:14 a.m. ET

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Zach Dillard

ATLANTA -- In the aftermath of the lowest point in the Braves' post-Bobby Cox reality, after the losses and disappointment piled up in a month the organization will not soon forget, manager Fredi Gonzalez rarely left his metro Atlanta home. He was fairly candid, whether in hyperbole or truth, on this point.

The team's September 2011 debacle, occasionally referred to simply as The Collapse after blowing a 8 1/2-game wild-card lead with 23 games remaining, came to define Gonzalez's first campaign after taking over for Cox, his mentor, and he was quoted in its fallout as feeling as though he let the city down. Harsh self-criticism, to be sure, but it apparently did not get him out of the house too often during that first month.

Of course, Gonzalez's tenure has featured plenty of success overall.

Since his hiring before that 2011 season, only two other MLB franchises have won more regular season games: Detroit and St. Louis. And with Cardinals manager Mike Matheny taking over for Hall of Famer Tony La Russa in 2012 and Brad Ausmus taking over for Jim Leyland this season, that leaves Gonzalez as the winningest manager in baseball over that stretch. His career record stands at 630-561, which isn't bad considering he spent nearly half his managerial career with the Jeffrey Loria-owned Marlins.

But as this 2014 season crawls to its all-but-determined conclusion -- with 12 games remaining on the schedule, the Braves sit 4 1/2 games back in the National League wildcard race with one of the worst offenses in franchise history and a pitching staff that can no longer pick up the slack -- there are definitive parallels to draw back to that infamous 2011 ending. For the most obvious comparison between the two seasons, look no further than this Gonzalez quote:

"If you look at our offense for the whole year, it never clicked for whatever reason. It never hit on all cylinders. The pitching covered it up for five months."

That was after the 2011 season.

That's recyclable material.

The series-opening loss to Stephen Strasburg and the soon-to-be-division-champion Washington Nationals on Monday night handed the Braves a 3-10 record this month. They've scored an MLB-worst 33 runs in those 13 games, a paltry mark for a team that opened September play in the thick of the playoff race. These are not September-specific issues, but they've been magnified -- and the view isn't pretty.

If this sounds familiar, it should: Gonzalez's club went 9-18 down the stretch in 2011, scoring little more than three runs per game. That culminated with five straight losses in which the offense plated seven total runs, including a 13-inning loss to the Phillies to officially miss the playoffs on the season's final day. Injuries to Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson, owners of two of the NL's top five ERAs entering that All-Star break, hurt down the stretch but, as is the franchise's bread and butter, the rotation was the catalyst. (Reminder: This '14 staff lost Kris Medlen, Brandon Beachy and Gavin Floyd to season-ending injuries. Both bullpens were very strong.)

Circumstances are different this time around -- the hunted became the hunters -- and there are just seven holdovers on the active roster that played on that 2011 team, but it's not too difficult to find similarities in the two September swoons, especially when it pertains to substandard offensive baseball:

Throw in the 2012 and 2013 seasons, and the Braves have not put up above-average offensive numbers late in the season in Gonzalez's tenure. The personnel has changed, drastically, but the results are rather stagnant. When rosters expand, offensive output goes south.

The Braves' lineup was held below three runs for the 56th time on Monday night -- against Strasburg, no less, who came up with an absolute gem after struggling against Atlanta throughout his career; talk about unfortunate, albeit fitting, timing -- and it's clear where the blame lies for their .500 record.

"It's a catch-22. Don't think of a (white) elephant in the room, and you think about it. They all know what's going on," Gonzalez said of his players. "Believe me, everybody's trying to help out or pitch in. Everybody's trying to move that runner, trying to get everybody in and we're not getting it done right now."

If Gonzalez is going to get credit for his overall regular-season record (as he should), then his 44-50 September record in Atlanta has to be pointed out as well. It's one of the few black marks on a regular-season resume that has held its own in a Hall of Fame shadow. That same logic follows for Frank Wren and the front office, architects of an organization that has produced many regular-season wins but little late-season success.

It goes without saying that this '14 rendition has major holes and deficiencies, too many inconsistencies for a franchise that prides itself on consistency. And that's an organization-wide issue. Great pitching can hide plenty, but not all.

As first baseman Freddie Freeman told reporters after the team was swept by the Texas Rangers, the worst team in baseball: "Our pitchers have to pitch a perfect game every time, pretty much. We're not scoring any runs. That puts a lot of pressure on the pitchers and that's not something you want to do every single day. ... When you have early opportunities, you have to get those guys in. We haven't been able to do that for the last couple weeks."

Or most of the season. Teams with the second-lowest scoring offense in the majors don't end up there because of a two- or three-week downturn. Consider this: Since the 1969 season, when MLB lowered its mound, only two other teams in franchise history have scored fewer total runs than the 2014 Braves ... the 1981 and 1994 teams, both of which played in strike-shortened seasons. Freeman & Co. stand a good chance of passing the 106-loss '88 team (555 runs) on that list, but the 583 runs scored by the 94-loss '75 team look out of reach, especially at the current rate.

Following that 2011 season, there was a shakeup in the Braves organization, and that's going to be a conversation point this offseason, too.

That season cost first-year hitting coach Larry Parrish, who came in with Gonzalez, his job two days after the season ended, and now it's Wren's handpicked hitting coach Greg Walker and assistant Scott Fletcher who are inevitably going to face the same scrutiny. Given reports, perhaps the entire front office and Gonzalez himself will fall under similar scrutiny.

Stumbling down the stretch can be a difficult pill to swallow, and disappointment has a way of driving change. 

The Braves entered this month just 1 1/2 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card standings. The Pirates were right there with them. It looked like the makings of a neck-and-neck-and-neck race to the finish. Since then, though, the Pirates have played well, the Brewers have not and the Braves have posted the worst record in the majors.

Drawing parallels to The Collapse, the one that got away and weighed so heavily on Gonzalez, is always going to be dicey given the nature of such a large lead evaporating in such a short amount of time, but the Braves are arguably playing even worse this time around. In the end, the stakes are (or perhaps were) pretty much just as high.

In an ongoing late-season performance reminiscent of one of the most embarrassing times in franchise history, if only in quality, the Braves do not look any closer to finding answers.

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