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Atlanta Braves: 5 Stages of Grief with The Rebuild

By John Buhler

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Stage 5: Acceptance

I remember the exact moment when I knew that the 2015 Atlanta Braves’ hopes and dreams were over.  July 11th, 2015.  Jason Grilli ruptured his Achilles’ Tendon trying to make a play on a ground ball hit between the pitcher’s mound and the first base bag.  Seeing him writhing around in discomforting pain in Coors Field proved to me that 2015 was the beginning of an inevitable rebuild for the Atlanta Braves.

John Hart put together a scrappy team that hustled and manufactured runs, only to have the bullpen imploded like a scheduled demolition every night.  We knew that power was not part of the equation offensively, but with the way the lineup was manufacturing runs and the strong starting pitching that the club showed at the start of the year, I thought this team could hover around .500 and have a pleasantly surprising 2015.

The middle relief of the bullpen leaked like a sieve from opening day on.  When Freddie Freeman went on the DL for the first time this season, all offensive continuity dissipated.  Then when our near All-Star closer suffered a horrible season-ending injury, that was it for me.

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I was looking at that the team in the second half more from the perspective of who looks like a decent future piece for the club.  But even those future building blocks have struggled mightily in the second half of the 2015 season.

Teams that want to win World Series will likely have to win multiple games in a series on the road to make that dream a reality.  As of July 7th, eight days before the Mid-Summer Classic in Cincinnati, Atlanta has won two games away from Turner Field.  At this point, I’d be surprised if the Atlanta Braves won that many games away from the Ted the rest of 2015.

It has to get worse before it gets better.  We have no excuse to deny it anymore, the Atlanta Braves after 24 seasons of mostly competent baseball are now in full-blown rebuild mode.  There is nothing we can do about it but hope that John Hart’s plan works by the time the Braves move into SunTrust Park in 2017.  Go Braves!

Next: Atlanta Braves: Trade for Chris Sale This Offseason?

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