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Photo by D. Benjamin Miller, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe Next Day Off Is the Seventeenth
Atlanta play ten games in ten days starting at 1:05 this afternoon, and the first day off does not arrive until the seventeenth. Tampa Bay, who walk into Truist Park on Tuesday with the identical record, are sitting still today.
Today is not the easy one. Today is game one of ten.
Atlanta play ten games in ten days, September 7 through the 16th. No off day inside it. Their next day off is Thursday the seventeenth.
Three opponents in that stretch. Philadelphia are .559. The Cubs are .563. Tampa Bay are .594, lead the AL East, and carry Atlanta's exact record, 85-58.
Now the part that should bother you. Tampa Bay are off today. They finished in Texas on Sunday and do not play again until Tuesday at Truist Park, against a team already a game deep into the ten. Atlanta's next opponent gets the rest day Atlanta don't.
Game one is on the road, on Labor Day. Jesus Luzardo is listed to start for Philadelphia at 13-5, 3.02, 209 strikeouts against 51 walks. Grant Holmes is listed opposite him at 9-5, 3.62, 104 against 55. Luzardo strikes out 4.10 men per walk. Holmes strikes out 1.89. More than twice as many, per walk. The walks are the gap.
September 2 at Washington, Holmes was perfect through three on 26 pitches before a rain delay ended his afternoon. Eight innings across his last two starts. On day one of ten straight, the number that matters is not his 3.62. It is how early the bullpen phone rings, with nine days stacked behind it.
I said yesterday the division is effectively over. It is. That is not what these ten days are for. What is live is the shape this team is in when the calendar lets go, and where they are standing.
I have been at 62% on Atlanta's October window since August 25. A schedule is not a result, so it does not move this morning. Come find me on the seventeenth.
The Tilt
Ten games in ten days will tell you more about Atlanta than the last month did.
— Dex Ponce
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Dex Ponce
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