On the same night the Atlanta Braves extended their winning streak to six games, they saw another one snapped. For the first time since 2017, they’re officially eliminated from postseason play.

It was a streak that featured six consecutive division titles, a wild-card berth, back-to-back 100-win seasons and a World Series championship right in the middle of it all.

To their credit, they delayed the inevitable for a long as they could. It took until eight games were remaining for their hopes to mathematically come to an end. It’s not impressive to delay the inevitable, but it’s a team that should have been officially eliminated some time ago.

There was a point where they were as much as 15 games back from a playoff spot in early August. They managed to gain ground in that time. Heading into Saturday morning, they are nine games back.

Since the start of August, this team has played well with a 23-17 record (.575). In that time, we saw multiple players who had been struggling the entire season experience a surge.

As exciting as it has been, it was too little too late. Showing they were too good to have played this poorly isn’t something they’ll be satisfied with, either.

Perhaps that’s revealing of how frustrating this season has been. An extra win here and there would have been a difference-maker. It would have taken these same late surgers simply sprinkling in a handful of big hits somewhere along the way.

Six more wins, for example, would have this team at .500 and three wins back from the playoff line. It’s obviously not that simple, but it shows how close they were to this season being different.

Therein lies the punishment of going 19-34 in one-run games, being shutout nine times, having 11 walk-off losses and having 31 blown leads.

Keep that in mind next time you think a game in the middle of the season is meaningless because there are 162 of them. It adds up.

The best that can be taken away from the last couple of months of the season is that maybe things will be better next season. However, that was the same thought at the end of last season when this team actually made the playoffs.

If there is any benefit to the strong finish, it helps build a better game plan for the offseason. It helps give an idea of where the improvements are needed. It can help gauge where players who are guaranteed to return next season are at, whether it’s evaluating health or general expectations.

So, by all means, push for a strong finish. Players don’t tank. However, the reasons behind having a strong finish are not the ones they would prefer to have.

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