SAN DIEGO – At around 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Braves manager Brian Snitker walked into an auditorium at Petco Park – the interview room for this series – and stepped up onto the small dais to settle in at the table. Instead of dropping into the middle seat, as he had Tuesday, he sat in the chair on the left side, which represented one final attempt to capture the mojo in a season that had almost none of it.
Around five and a half hours later, with his team eliminated, Snitker went up to the same table. This time, he sat in the middle. He remarked that his earlier decision did not turn his club’s luck.
If you regularly watched Braves baseball this season, you knew this much: There probably was no way to reverse the fortunes. For months, it seemed like the baseball gods had it out for this team.
“Just the tenacity, the drive, the consistency, the work ethic, how they never -- everything that these guys went through, nobody was ever woe is me, and they weren’t griping about anything,” Snitker said of how he’ll remember this group. “They just kept playing. They kept playing. They kept working. The energy never waned. Their attitude never waned. I just talked to them, too. I’m about as proud of a team as I’ve ever had, quite honestly, with how they’ve handled everything.”
In a one-run game in the ninth inning, Travis d’Arnaud, pinch-hitting as one final bullet off the bench, popped up a ball into foul territory beside the first-base line. Padres catcher Kyle Higashioka sprinted over to it and caught it, which sealed the Braves’ fate.
Their season is over.
The Braves lost to the Padres, 5-4, in Game 2 of the National League wild-card series. Atlanta was swept in the best-of-three series. This was the expected outcome for everyone except the guys in the visiting clubhouse.
At first, that clubhouse was, as expected, a somber scene. Eventually, a circle formed in one corner of it. Matt Olson, Marcell Ozuna, Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy, Orlando Arcia, Ramón Laureano and Gio Urshela sat and quietly talked. They sipped their beers. They laughed together.
They have spent every day together for months. Now, their time is up.
“This always sucks,” Olson said of that feeling. “There’s never a good way to sugarcoat it. You wanna be holding a trophy at the end of the year. It was our goal for the whole year. This is always going to sting. Just go back to work, go back to the drawing board, get ready for spring training.”
With the end to every season also comes this harsh reality: This is the final time this exact group will be together. “That’s the business side of it,” Olson said. “A lot of moving pieces and numbers and personal interests involved. We love the group we have here.”
Even if the Braves hoped they’d stay healthy, they grew to love the guys who filled in for those on the injured list. And this offseason, they have a big-name free agent: Max Fried.
While that one group of guys talked and laughed with one another, Fried sat and stared into his locker at the opposite end of the clubhouse. This couldn’t be easy for Fried. In what might be his final start in a Braves uniform, he allowed five runs over two innings. Given a one-run lead before he even took the mound, he felt he let down his teammates.
“I couldn’t be prouder of this group,” Fried said. “It just seemed like it was one thing after another and we never made an excuse, we just wanted to go out there and play our brand of baseball and win. It would’ve been amazing, it would’ve been great to be able to keep it going. It’s frustrating I was the one to take the ball on the last day and put us in a hole, to not be able to at least give us a shot tomorrow.”
Fried said all of that before he eventually settled into his chair. Guys came and went around him. For a few minutes, he hardly moved. It was difficult to witness. He cares so much and tries so hard. To him, it means a lot to wear a Braves uniform.
It’s not solely his fault, though. The Braves fought back from the four-run deficit, but their offense never got going in this series. They scored four runs in 18 innings.
Postseason baseball is often unpredictable.
But this – the Braves’ offense failing them when it mattered most – was actually the most likely outcome. This team, missing stars in Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley, didn’t have the firepower.
“Just resiliency,” d’Arnaud said of how he’ll remember this team. “Losing multiple All-Stars and somehow making the playoffs. Resiliency.”
Many people will look at this final outcome in two ways:
1. The Braves were eliminated in their first round for the third consecutive season.
2. The Braves, who lost multiple All-Stars and were never fully healthy, still reached the postseason.
In reality, the most realistic view is a mix of both. Could the Braves have performed better this season? Yes. Can they learn lessons from it? Of course. But did they have the postseason field’s best team? Not even close.
“We won 89 games,” Snitker said. “I’m so proud of those guys. I just told them that. It’s amazing what they did, I think, to put ourselves in contention. We had a chance here. We got in the tournament. Get a hit yesterday, hit today, who knows, we may be playing tomorrow. But we’re not. It’s the way this thing is. That’s how fragile this is and how hard it is. You just remember how hard it is in this long season for things to go right for you.”
“I feel like this was a pretty positive season, I guess, considering how rough it was,” Michael Harris II said. “Having the guys we had go down and never having the same lineup since Day One, still winning 89 games is pretty huge for this team, and having the chance to even go to the World Series. I’m really proud of this group of guys and how we connect, and we still were able to come together to win games even when we didn’t have all the guys we’re used to having.”
In February, the Braves reported to spring training and proclaimed their “World Series or bust” aspirations. On Wednesday, they packed up the clubhouse for the final time. So much happened in between then and now, but the reality is that they fell short of their goal, which is difficult for them to swallow.
It’s even tougher when recalling all the times it felt like luck and fate were not on this team’s side. A week into the season, the Braves lost Spencer Strider. Two months in, Acuña tore his ACL. And on and on and on. For the 2024 Braves, the breaks came on X-rays and MRIs – not in the form of luck.
“You can look back and point at a ton of different things.” Olson said. “It’s very easy to look back and say what we could’ve done better. A couple guys went down, but it was never an excuse in here, never something that we leaned on. It was always something that we felt like we had the talent in here and the team to do something special. There’s always going to be something to look back on. You can feel bad about it or you can take some learning experiences along the way and hopefully continue (to get better).”
In 2025, the Braves could return their entire core – minus Fried if he doesn’t re-sign with them. They’ll once again be one of baseball’s most talented teams. They could be dominant again.
They could leave 2024 far behind. They can make their fans forget it ever happened.
In that visiting clubhouse after the final game of their season, the Braves endured the emotions no player wants to feel.
“This feeling always fuels you,” Olson said. “It sucks. Especially coming into spring, where we felt like we were, it’s a letdown. I think everybody’s gonna carry a little piece of that with them throughout the offseason.”
And the Braves, barring anything surprising, will be led by the same man. After the loss, Snitker said he intends to manage next season. He took this a step further: He added that he wishes spring training started the next day.
In that sad clubhouse, his players felt the same way.
“February can’t come soon enough,” d’Arnaud said.
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