Braves doomed themselves in NLDS with unnecessary distraction
The Atlanta Braves were officially eliminated from the postseason on Thursday night, dropping Game 4 of the NLDS to the Philadelphia Phillies by a 3-1 margin.
While that game was the official end of the season, they seemed to take themselves out of the series at some point between Games 2 and 3.
That was when it was made known that Braves infielder Orlando Arcia was reported to have been walking around the locker room saying, "Atta boy, Harper!" to mock Phillies superstar Bryce Harper for being doubled off first base to end Game 2 of the series.
That became a rallying cry for the Phillies, and it became a point of frustration for the Braves due to the attention it received.
When Harper homered twice in the Phillies' Game 3 rout, he stared down Arcia as he circled the bases, clearly very aware of what was said.
The Braves, however, seemed more concerned that Arcia's comment was made public and spent the next two days pushing back about how their locker room sanctuary was violated.
Travis D'Arnaud looked completely defeated talking about it following the Game 3 loss, and it remained a talking point going into Game 4 on Thursday.
The fact this clearly affected the Braves as much as it did was never a good sign, and there is no way it should have prompted that sort of a response. It almost seemed as if when they saw the way Philadelphia reacted, and the way Harper handled it, they resigned themselves to defeat and now had in a built-in excuse for why the series was unraveling and getting away from them.
In most cases, trash talk and bulletin-board material like that doesn't make athletes play harder, and once the games actually begin, it becomes even more irrelevant. Harper and the Phillies were always going to be playing hard. Harper was still going to hit those two pitches out of the park on Wednesday night. Arcia's words and the subsequent reporting did not affect that.
All that stuff does is change the way the winning team handles victory.
But the way the Braves seemed to unravel after it in Games 3 and 4 is truly bizarre. The fact they pushed back as hard as they did made it more of a story than it otherwise would have been and only seem to throw them off their game even more.
The lesson for the Braves going forward should be that when you say something in the locker room in the presence of media, TV cameras and audio recorders, it is probably going to be reported. In that case, it's probably best to just accept it, not push back and blame the media, allowing it to become a distraction.
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