Every week for most of this Major League Baseball season, there’s been a growing opinion that it can’t get any worse for the Atlanta Braves. Injuries, prolonged hitting slumps and shoddy pitching long ago derailed a once-promising season.
But as the Bravos join the Cincinnati Reds tonight at Bristol Motor Speedway for an otherwise meaningless game that will reportedly break a 71-year-old single-game MLB attendance record, I’ll nominate this week as one of the worst in franchise history.
Or don’t you think losing 1-0 in 10 innings in Kansas City, blowing an 11-3 lead in Cincy by giving up eight runs in the eighth inning before winning 12-11 on two sacrifice flies in the 10th and losing Ronald Acuna Jr.
again to a calf injury _ though not nearly as severe as the original fear of an Achilles injury _ qualifies as a bad week?
But let’s momentarily break from that mindset to focus on Bristol, which will be the first regular-season MLB game ever played in Tennessee. First of all, if you’re attending the game, bring binoculars. Strong binoculars. I once covered a Tennessee-Virginia Tech football game at Bristol and without televisions in the press box I might as well have been watching an ant farm.
Now imagine trying to follow a baseball in that setting. And while the Braves and Reds have played two one-run games already this week, it’s tough to get too excited when Atlanta now has the fourth fewest wins in all of MLB (46-63), though Cincinnati (58-53) could be good enough to conceivably make the playoffs.
Still, when looking for the best reason to sort of, kind of watch a baseball game with at least 85,000 of your closest friends and neighbors at an iconic NASCAR oval, that reason just might be that country music star Tim McGraw is performing before the game. A $23 ticket when this game was first announced _ the worst seats in the house are going for close to $100 now _ to see McGraw doesn’t sound like a bad investment. And in one of those weirdly feasible pairings, rapper Pitbull is also performing.
(A bit of trivia, courtesy of our friends at Sports Illustrated: As odd as it might seem, McGraw and Pitbull have worked together before, the two collaborating on “Get Get Get Down,” which was on a Pitbull EP promoting the 2024 Daytona 500. The signature line from that song: “I party like a rock star, look like a movie star, play like an all-star.”
What more could anyone ask for?
But there are _ again courtesy of SI _ reasons to tune in FOX tonight early for the 7:15 first pitch from Braves pitcher Spencer Strider beyond McGraw and Pitbull. For instance, the ceremonial first pitch will be thrown by Braves Hall of Famer Chipper Jones to Reds Hall of Famer Johnny Bench. The two teams will wear racing inspired uniforms and batting helmets. And the field, though placed over the oval’s infield, has regular baseball field dimensions _ 330 down the foul lines, 400 to center, 384 feet down the left-field alley and 375 for the right-field alley.
By comparison, the Reds’ home park, The Great American SMALL Park, as pitchers sometimes not so affectionately refer to it, is 328 feet down the left-field foul line, 325 down the right foul line, 404 to dead center with 379 to left-center and 370 to right-center.
And if you’re wondering who should have homefield advantage from a fan standpoint, Bristol is 307 miles from Cincy and 325 from Atlanta. You can’t get much more neutral than that.
But when this game ends, the Braves still have 52 games to play with almost zero chance of reaching the postseason for an eighth straight year, which included a World Series crown in 2021.
Usually savvy general manager Alex Anthopoulos made no major moves at Thursday’s trade deadline, though one wonders if he could have or should have given the current roster. All five starting pitchers on Opening Day _ ace Chris Sale, the reliable Spencer Schwellenbach, AJ Smith-Sawver, Reynaldo Hernandez and Grant Holmes _ have been lost to injury. Strider is just now rounding into the form he showed two years ago after undergoing arm surgery.
And the bats have been similarly brittle. Acuna Jr. has played in but 55 games as he continues to bounce back from knee surgery. Ozzie Albies has been hurt, and Austin Riley. Michael Harris is just now batting north of .230. The entire season has been a disaster and most believe longtime manager Brian Snitker _ the architect of that ‘21 World Series _ will retire at the end of the year.
But Anthopoulos standing pat with a roster long on potential if short on good health, means that whoever skippers the Braves in 2026 is bound to have a more potent, healthier roster than this season. In the eyes of many in Braves Country, it would have been nice to get rid of the inconsistent closer Raisel Iglesias and the equally inconsistent slugger Marcell Ozuna at the trade deadline.
Then again, who would give Atlanta anyone worthwhile for those two? As AA said of not making a deal: “We were not just going to give guys away and dump salary.”
Sometimes it’s the deals you don’t make that make the difference in the long run.
Still, as this bummer of a summer drags to a close, let us hope that the remaining 52 games fly by as quickly as NASCAR competitors usually fly around Bristol Motor Speedway. And that come 2026, all of this year’s injured Braves play like All-Stars upon their return.
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Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@mccallie.org