If all goes right, the Braves can give the Phillies a taste of their own medicine

We still have a week of baseball left to be played. While the Philadelphia Phillies are fresh off winning their first division title in over a decade, the Atlanta Braves need to play their best baseball of the season to get in as one of three NL Wild Card teams. Atlanta is currently 1.5 games back of the Arizona Diamondbacks for the last spot in. The New York Mets are two games ahead of them as well.

Look. I am not counting on this at all, as I have followed this team all season long, but follow me on this. If the Braves win their final two series of the season vs. the Mets and the Kansas City Royals, finishing with something at or better than a 4-2 record over the course of this week, that might be enough to get into the postseason as the No. 6 seed. Atlanta would probably then face Milwaukee.

Even if this is the year of destiny for the Phillies, Philadelphia may learn the same hard lesson that Atlanta, the Baltimore Orioles and the Los Angeles Dodgers know all too well: Getting a first-round bye is not all that it is cracked up to be. Yes, you get five games to prove your worth, but having to restart it from scratch is so incredibly difficult. Sometimes, you run into a buzzsaw and that is it!

I'm not banking on Atlanta beating Philadelphia in the NLDS if it even gets that far, but it may happen.

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Philadelphia Phillies must navigate the troublesome first-round bye now

While the Houston Astros have been able to figure it out, maybe this is the year the Dodgers finally do? The best team out west has not gotten to the NLCS since falling to the Braves in 2021. Although Philadelphia has played in the last two NLCS, the Phillies will be entering the postseason in a very different manner. They will go from the hunters to the hunted, one that will be having to reboot it.

Again, Philadelphia has been one of the most consistently strong teams over the last three years, and I respect that. Conversely, who saw the Snakes winning the NL pennant a year ago? They were an NL Wild Card team. What has hurt the Braves the last two postseasons has been rough outings from its starting pitching vs. the big bats of Philadelphia, but what was Atlanta's weakness is now a strength.

Ultimately, I think anything short of a World Series title should be met with great disappointment in Philadelphia this season. While this year has not gone according to plan for Atlanta, nobody really gave the 2021 team a chance to win the Fall Classic ... until they did ... What the new postseason format has shown us over the last two years is the hottest team has little chance to be put out.

Philadelphia worked hard to get this far, but the Phillies will have to work even harder to win it all now.