Braves on top is the only just ending
The oddsmakers say the Houston Astros will ultimately defeat the Atlanta Braves in the World Series that begins Tuesday inside the Astros’ Minute Maid Park at 8:09 EDT. That could be really good news for the Braves, since they were also underdogs to Milwaukee in the divisional round and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
Sure, the Bravos have the fewest regular-season wins of any playoff team (88), but they may also be playing better than anyone when it matters most.
And they certainly have two of baseball’s best personal stories ever in NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario and lefty reliever Tyler Matzek, whom the Braves signed to a two-year minor league contract in August of 2019, then watched him record the three biggest outs of Atlanta’s postseason in Saturday’s seventh inning against the Dodgers.
To be fair, though Rosario had never previously exited a winner on a stage as big as a league championship series, he had twice batted over .300 in the playoffs as a member of the Minnesota Twins against the New York Yankees, homering against the Yanks in both a 2017 divisional series and in 2019’s ALCS.
But good as those numbers were, they were nothing compared to what Rosario put up against the defending world champion Dodgers: a .560 batting average, three home runs and nine RBI.
And you wonder why Braves manager Brian Snitker offered this insight into the player Atlanta acquired from Cleveland on July 17th: “Talk to guys from Minnesota and that’s the one thing they said about him, that you want him up there in big situations.”
There is no bigger situation in baseball than the World Series. But there was clearly a more stressful situation staring 31-year-old reliever Tyler Alexander Matzek in the face in Saturday’s seventh inning, what with
one Dodger already home to slice the Braves’ lead to 4-2 and runners on second and third with no outs.
Despite being within one win of the World Series, Atlanta had authored such collapses before, as in last season to be precise, when another 3-1 lead against the Dodgers in the bestof-seven NLCS became a 4-3 series loss.
Again up 3-1 this year, the Braves had watched LA cruise to an 11-2 win in Game 5 and now Dodger Blue was threatening again.
Only Matzek wouldn’t allow it. In case you’ve forgotten, the first batter he faced — future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols, who was signed by the Dodgers to hit lefties — struck out. So did the second guy, Steven Souza. But it was the third guy, one Mookie Betts, who figured to be too much for Matzek, who was playing independent ball for the Texas AirHogs of the American Association before the Braves signed him.
As Atlanta general manager Alex Anthopoulos said of Betts after the game, “He is so hard to strike out.”
Perhaps. But two straight 97-mph fastballs put two strikes on the Nashville native. Then a harder, higher one struck him out.
Technically, the Braves still had six more outs to get, three of which Matzek took care of. Then Will Smith retired the final three in the ninth.
And while Rosario was certainly worthy of the MVP award, he did no more to send Atlanta to its first Fall Classic since 1999 than Matzek, who was called upon in nine of the Braves’ 10 total playoff games against the Brewers and Dodgers.
Said the closer Smith of Matzek’s magnificent work: “I don’t know where to put what he just did for this team. He saved us. We don’t get to the World Series without him. Not even close.”
If this feels like any previous Braves World Series appearance, it might be that first one in 1991 against Minnesota. They were all young and inexperienced and relatively unknown back then, a Cinderella story of worst to first if ever there was one.
Then they went out and took Kirby Puckett’s and Jack Morris’s powerful Minnesota Twins to seven games, even forcing an extra inning in the final game before losing 1-0 in the 10th.
ESPN later rated that Series that included five one-run games and three extra-inning contests as the best one in the first 100 years of the Fall Classic.
Will this one against the Cheatin’ Astros top that one? It’s doubtful, even if karma alone should do in Houston after the World Series it stole from LA for its elaborate sign stealing caper. But it’s also clear that the Braves are once more a collection of cuddly, charismatic heroes who’ll surely be the average fan’s preferred team far beyond the Big Peach.
And with apologies to first baseman Freddie Freeman, shortstop Dansby Swanson, the Duke of Pearl Joc Pederson and Rosario — to name but four — Matzek is the best story, having gone from being signed for $3.9 million out of California’s Capistrano Valley High School by the Colorado Rockies with the 11th overall pick in the 2009 draft to reportedly getting an electricians’ license because he believed his baseball career was over seven years later. Talk about worst to first.
As they met with the media early, early Sunday morning, someone asked Matzek’s fellow lefty reliever AJ Minter to put the last three weeks into perspective, if possible.
Said Minter, himself no stranger to struggle, having been demoted to Gwinnett for much of this summer: “If you haven’t gone through failure, then you haven’t experienced life. Going through failure, it builds you. If you have the taste of failing and the taste of winning, that’s what keeps you driving and I choose winning every time, so that’s our fuel.”
And that’s why Matzek and Co. should stop the Astros in six to deliver Atlanta its first world championship since 1995, if only because playing the game the right way, the Braves Way, deserves to prevail over Houston’s hoodlums.