To say the Atlanta Braves enter Game 4 of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night with their backs against the wall would be a pretty massive understatement. One more loss, and they're staring at yet another early playoff exit — one that would trigger some very uncomfortable questions over the offseason. And to make matters worse, the Dodgers are sending yet another ace to the hill in Tyler Glasnow, while Atlanta's bats offer very little hope of a comeback.
But it's not time to despair just yet. Yes, the Braves face a long climb to keep their World Series hopes alive. There's more than enough talent on this team for a comeback, though. They just need to make some adjustments to bring that talent to bear, starting with these four obvious changes.
Find a way to get Sean Murphy in the lineup
If that means starting him at catcher because Ronald Acuña Jr. is still too sore to handle the outfield, then so be it. Maybe that's harsh to Drake Baldwin, who remains of the better young players in the sport and a key part of the future in Atlanta, but there's no time to worry about hurt feelings anymore.
Put simply, Murphy has been the better hitter than Baldwin of late, dating back to the Wild Card Round against Philly. He's clearly seeing the ball well right now, and while the Dodgers are starting a righty in Glasnow, you can't afford to keep rolling Baldwin out there — especially at the top of the order — with how poor his at-bats have been in recent days. In an ideal world you can play both, but the Braves aren't in an ideal world right now.
Chain Ha-Seong Kim to the bench
This one feels much easier. Of course, Atlanta doesn't have any particularly compelling alternatives at shortstop — it's been one of the themes of this season, really — but at this point, anything is better than another Kim start. The offense has bad enough, but now his defense has become a liability, as he booted a ground ball in the first inning of Game 3.
Even the Braves seem to realize that Kim is untenable in his current form, given that they pinch-hit for him after just a single plate appearance and slid Mauricio Dubon to short for the remainder of the game. Atlanta's woefully thin bench has Walt Weiss' hands tied to some extent, but you simply can't keep doing this. Put Dubon at the six and figure the rest out later.
Be far, far less aggressive at the plate
This one is filed under "things that are much easier said than done". The Dodgers have the best rotation in baseball, for starters, and Atlanta has struggled with plate discipline all year; there's a reason they ranked 28th in both walk rate and OBP this year.
But it was a particularly glaring problem in Game 3, from Drake Baldwin swinging at a first-pitch splitter out of the zone with the bases loaded and one out in the fifth inning to Matt Olson bailing out Tanner Scott by swinging at two pitches at his fists while representing the tying run in the bottom of the eighth. The good news is that Glasnow, as electric as his stuff is, has always run below-average chase rates. If Atlanta can't figure out how to make Los Angeles attack the zone more consistently, though, it's going to be next to impossible to score enough runs to win this series.
Walt Weiss needs to manage his pitching staff with a much shorter leash
Giving Chris Sale some extra slack in Game 3 — despite the fact that he clearly didn't have his usual command — was one thing, given that it's Chris Sale. But Weiss was also a bit too lackadaisical with his bullpen choices in Game 1 of this series, despite it being very much there for the taking against Tarik Skubal.
Granted, that was the start of a series with a bullpen that had just gone through a three-game Wild Card war, and certainly Weiss will take a different approach in an elimination game. But he's never been the most aggressive manager, and he'll need to have a hairpin trigger with Tyler Mahle on the mound in Game 4. Atlanta's relief corps is among its foremost strengths, and they didn't use top arms like Robert Suarez and Didier Fuentes in Game 3. It needs to be all hands on deck here, Sale aside.
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