{"id":43264,"date":"2016-09-21T23:11:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T03:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=43264"},"modified":"2020-07-24T23:11:33","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T03:11:33","slug":"failing-at-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=43264","title":{"rendered":"Failing at failing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Braves started the season 0-9, I thought \u201coh man, this is the year.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 This was the year I would sit back and watch the Atlanta Braves drop 100 games, and I would feel some sadistic satisfaction that the organization that chose to deliberately flip the bird to all their collective fans in exchange for dirty money, would watch large numbers of said collective fans shake their heads in not mad, just disapproval.<\/span><\/p>\n

I felt good when they finished the month of April at 5-18.\u00a0 I felt even better when they finished May with a record of 15-36, with more than twice the losses than they had wins.\u00a0 Things were even looking good when the Braves hobbled into the All-Star break at a paltry 31-58 record, a putrid win percentage of .348.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now a .467 winning percentage is nothing to really boast about, but that\u2019s what the Braves have played since the All-Star break, and at the time I\u2019m writing this, they\u2019ve gone 29-33 since the break.\u00a0 They\u2019re sitting at 60-91 with 11 games to play, and even a .467 team would have difficulty in going 2-9 and securing the unholy 100-loss season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The math simply does not favor the failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In other words, despite the fact that the Braves started the season on water and were once on pace to break the 120-loss record set by the Mets back in 1962, they\u2019ve somehow found some competency and played just well enough to probably stave off a 100-loss season, for the second straight year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Winning 100 is one of the harder feats to achieve in baseball, but apparently if you\u2019re a sadistic Braves fan, the pursuit of losing 100 seems just as frustratingly difficult.\u00a0 Be it an influx of pride and determination from the players, pressure from dirty stakeholders and shareholders to not be too embarrassing of a club, the Braves have proved that striving for failure, for the sake of the future, is something that they are also incapable of achieving.<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, the Braves\u2019 obtuse selfishness to play hard to the bitter unceremonious end has pretty much solidified that the Minnesota Twins are going to be the unanimous first pick in the 2017 draft; a well in which the Braves could very well have cashed in on an invaluable piece of the future, but instead they\u2019ll fuck that up too, and once the crown jewel of the draft is inevitably picked by the Twins, they\u2019ll forego all of the next best choices for some high school pitcher from LaGrange who doesn\u2019t project to require that big of a signing bonus because despite the fact that the Braves organization is greedy, the Braves organization is also notoriously cheap; historically, they\u2019ve missed out on numerous players who have flourished into good players, because of concerns that they\u2019d \u201ccost too much to sign.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s way less merit to finishing in the middle of the pack as opposed to being the worst team in the league.\u00a0 Obviously, the worst team gets the first pick in the draft, but frankly, nobody remembers a 98-loss season.\u00a0 But a 100-loss season, and being the worst team in baseball?\u00a0 That\u2019s something that sticks. \u00a0With the organization, the fans, and even the players.\u00a0 It becomes a measuring stick of what not<\/em> to perform near.\u00a0\u00a0 It becomes a benchmark for fans to realize what a three game losing streak could escalate into, or when the team is doing poorly, that things could be worse.\u00a0 It also lets players know what kind of team performance is necessary to suck so badly.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than just a Fight Club <\/em>quote, \u201cit isn\u2019t until you\u2019ve lost everything are you free to do anything,\u201d the Braves\u2019 stubbornness to dedicate everything to hitting bottom, is probably going to be one of those things that will prevent them from actually being able to accurately steer their way onto the road of recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other than highlights of 1995, I probably won\u2019t live to see another Atlanta Braves championship.\u00a0 Or a 100-loss season.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Braves started the season 0-9, I thought \u201coh man, this is the year.\u201d\u00a0 This was the year I would sit back and watch the Atlanta Braves drop 100 games, and I would feel some sadistic satisfaction that the organization that chose to deliberately flip the bird to all their collective fans in exchange … Continue reading Failing at failing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,45,50],"class_list":["post-43264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-braves","tag-fail","tag-honor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43266,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43264\/revisions\/43266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}