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Going out with a thud: The Braves' historically awful farewell to Turner Field
General view of the die hard few fans attending the game between the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants during the final season at Turner Field. Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

Going out with a thud: The Braves' historically awful farewell to Turner Field

For the past couple of seasons, the Atlanta Braves have been an especially bad baseball team. This is mostly by design. When the new front office came into power, it decided that instead of trying to convince most of the soon-to-be-very pricey veteran talent to stay in town, the powers that be would instead trade them for prospects in order to transform what was once a barren minor league system into arguably the best farm in baseball.

The rise of the Braves' minor league system has resulted in the precipitous fall of the major league team. Whether it's by design or not, it's still a bummer of an experience to watch your favorite team go through the painful process of an extreme rebuild, and that's what Braves fans have been going through for the past two seasons.

The pain has been compounded by the fact that this is also the final season for the Braves in the city of Atlanta proper. The team managed to convince nearby suburban Cobb County to help fund a new stadium, and the Braves will move into SunTrust Park for the 2017 season. While there's a completely different conversation to be had about the young age of the stadium that the Braves are leaving and exactly how this new stadium is getting funded, we can definitely talk about the fact that the Braves aren't exactly making their final season at Turner Field one to remember.

Atlanta currently has the worst home record in all of baseball and even got off to a historically bad start at home. The Braves managed to win only two of their first 22 games at home, which was a mark of futility that hadn't been reached in baseball since 1906. Whenever your team is compared to numbers from the dead-ball era, it's either extremely good or extremely bad, and in the case of the Braves, it was the latter.

Things haven't gotten much better at Turner Field for Atlanta since then, as the team has managed to only win 24 games at home this season (as of this writing), which is a pretty bad way to turn out the lights on a stadium that's being vacated way too soon.

As a matter of fact, the home record is still bad enough that it qualifies as one of the worst seasons ever for a team that's leaving a stadium for a new one. A recent comparison is the Florida Marlins and their final season in what is now the newly renovated Hard Rock Stadium. The Marlins finished 72-90 overall but also ended the season with a terrible home record of 31-47, which was good for a .397 win percentage. Considering how few games there are left for the Braves during their time at Turner Field and the fact that they're currently sitting on a .338 win percentage at home, they'll have to go on a major tear in order to make sure they can somehow avoid having what is probably the worst final home season of a stadium in modern baseball history.

In addition to the bad baseball that's been on display for most of the 2016 campaign at Turner Field, the attendance hasn't been stellar. The team is currently on track to see its lowest attendance in the stadium's existence, so the players don't even have the novelty of enjoying a stadium's final season going for them. Granted, it's very difficult to get nostalgic about a stadium that is not even old enough to legally drink, and it's even harder to get motivated to go to a soon-to-be college football stadium while the team that's in it now is playing bad baseball.

However, for the noble fans who have been making the trip to see Turner Field in its final days as a baseball stadium, they've been treated to some decent baseball during the final month of this wretched season. Atlanta's normally anemic offense has undergone a major revival since the All-Star Break, with first baseman Freddie Freeman leading the way, currently on track for a career year. Additionally, guys like Ender Inciarte, Nick Markakis and little-known Adonis Garcia have been swinging the bat pretty well as of late, and even Matt Kemp has been getting in on the fun.

Additionally, some of the most promising prospects who have been honing their craft in the much-ballyhooed farm system are beginning to make their way to the big league team. Shortstop Dansby Swanson has played well since being called up to the MLB squad, and any time a former No. 1 overall pick in the MLB Draft can make a somewhat smooth jump from Double-A baseball to the big time, it's a huge positive. Additionally, speedy outfielder Mallex Smith will be making his return to the team once the minor league playoffs are over, and a host of other prospects are set to make their debuts later this month.

However, you still need wins to get most casual fans to the ballpark, and those have still been few and far in between. Next year's version of the Atlanta Braves will surely be better, but only the fans who are willing to wade their way through some of the worst traffic in the country will be able to enjoy it. For now, the final season at Turner Field has been a long, tough slog — a far cry from the days when the ballpark was consistently home to playoff baseball in October.

Now, the final game in the history of the stadium will indeed be played in October, but it won't be a postseason game. It'll just be an interleague contest against the Detroit Tigers. The stands will be full as the fans say goodbye, but the focus will be on contrived nostalgia for a 20-year-old ballpark and excitement for the new one that's on the outskirts of the city.

It'll be a strange moment in the franchise's history, but it'll also be a merciful end to what has been a painful final season at Turner Field, one that could go down ignominiously in history.

Can you name every Atlanta Braves player to have his number retired?
SCORE:
0/10
TIME:
3:00
3
Dale Murphy
6
Bobby Cox
10
Chipper Jones
21
Warren Spahn
29
John Smoltz
31
Greg Maddux
35
Phil Niekro
41
Eddie Mathews
44
Hank Aaron
47
Tom Glavine

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