Braves Finish Clinching Day with 5-2 Win over Cubs
By Brad Rowland
Sep 22, 2013; Chicago, IL, USA; Members of the Atlanta Braves celebrate on the field after the game against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. The Braves defeated the Cubs 5-2 and clinched the National League eastern division championship. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
With news that the Braves clinched the NL East division title earlier in the day, it would be easy to think that the game in Chicago would be void of story lines. However, the 5-2 victory proved to be very interesting.
Obviously, the biggest story of the day is the division title, and it was nice to see the Braves celebrate on the field. Fittingly, Craig Kimbrel blew away Chicago with a 3-strikeout 9th inning to finish things off, and the party was on. Before that, however, the biggest story on the field was the play of Andrelton Simmons.
Simmons was his normal, tremendous self on defense, but he also provided a two home-run day for the offense. The second of his two blasts provided two runs of much-needed insurance in the 8th inning (he drove in Brian McCann), and after the ball flew over the wall, the rest of the day was nearly mathematical.
On the mound, Julio Teheran was very solid once again for the Braves. The youngster navigated through 6 innings, allowing just 1 earned run on 4 hits (with no walks), while striking out 7 batters. It’s encouraging to see the more dominant Teheran back after a couple of “meh” outings, and with the playoffs around the corner, the “good” Teheran would be beneficial.
The major storyline of the day, outside of the win, was the shocking use of Alex Wood out of the bullpen. For context, Wood came into the game to get 2 outs in the 8th inning in his first bullpen appearance since July 12th against the Reds. Prior to his emergence from the bullpen, no one had any reasonable thought that we’d see Wood out of the ‘pen this season, and it brings about all kinds of speculation surrounding the playoff rotation.
It remains to be seen what Fredi Gonzalez’s motivation was for inserted Wood into the game, but we won’t know until he speaks publicly following the clubhouse celebration. The #4 spot in the rotation appears to suddenly be up for grabs (Freddy Garcia? Paul Maholm?) and Wood could be on the way to a high-leverage bullpen role. We’ll update you as the situation becomes more clear.
All in all, it was an awesome day in Braves country. The team is headed to the playoffs, and this time, they’ll avoid the 1-game Wild Card playoff. It’ll be an interesting week of games prior to the end of the season, but one thing is for sure, the Braves are NL East champs.