Home of the Braves: Atlanta's end-of-season schedule edge lends itself to playoff run

It won't be easy, but nothing ever is. No? Woo-hoo! The Atlanta Braves will finish the regular season back at the friendly confines of Truist Park. Yes, it will be up against two other playoff hopeful teams in the arch rival New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals, who are fading faster than the Jacksonville Jaguars. Simply put, if Atlanta wants to qualify for the MLB postseason, it must play its best baseball now.

The good news for Atlanta is despite the worthy adversaries coming to Cumberland, the Braves might actually be catching a few scheduling breaks, when compared to the teams vying for the postseason. Entering Tuesday night's series opener vs. the Mets, Atlanta is 85-71 on the year. While that is two games back of the Mets, they are only 1.5 games back of the Arizona Diamondbacks now.

Atlanta may finish the year at home vs. New York and Kansas City, but the Mets have to finish at the Braves and at the Milwaukee Brewers, a team that is still in the mix for a first-round bye, albeit barely. While Arizona still needs to finish its penultimate series of the season with the San Francisco Giants, they will finish the regular season at home vs. the San Diego Padres, another team in the playoff mix.

While I fully expect Kansas City to stop losing at some point, they're on quite a disastrous run right now! So what I am getting at is this: As skipper Aaron Boone always says, "It's right there in front of them!"

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Atlanta Braves may actually catch a break with their end-of-season schedule

Simply put, every game Atlanta plays the rest of the way is a playoff game. The good news is Atlanta will have all of Braves Country rooting them on every day between now and Sunday. Yes, they are probably going to have to go to Milwaukee to play the Brewers in a best-of-three series should they qualify for the postseason, but just getting in would be a huge testament to this disaster of a season.

Everything that could have gone wrong for the Braves mostly did. While the starting pitching and Marcell Ozuna's bat have been bright spots, injuries and offensive inconsistencies have plagued this team throughout. The goods news is if the Braves do somehow qualify for the postseason, then it is an entirely different ballgame. Not having a first-round bye this year could be what this team needs.

Momentum may be nearly impossible to quantify, but I have watched enough sports in my 35 years of life to know it is a very real thing. Even if it is purely psychological in nature, you can feel it on the field of play, in the crowd and at home from the TV set. An intense amount of focus, great execution and a bit of luck may get the Braves into the postseason for the seventh season in a row. We can only hope.

The team's mental toughness will be tested even more, but these are the moments players live for.