BASEBALL PLAYOFFS : BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Were Expectations Too High?

PHILADELPHIA — The National League playoffs ended Thursday night. The team that had nothing to lose beat the team that had everything to lose.

The albatross of their expectations accompanied the Atlanta Braves to an unexpected and premature death at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies, the beasts from the North.

“We went to spring training aware if we didn’t win the World Series our season would be considered a failure,” right fielder David Justice said after that failure Atlanta may have feared became reality.

Those unshaven and unkempt Phillies--”We may appear to be scumbags but nobody ever defined what a ballplayer is supposed to look like,” newly bearded Mickey Morandini said--are advancing to Saturday night’s World Series opener at Toronto having defeated Greg Maddux and the Braves, 6-3, to win the NL playoffs, four games to two.

For the Braves, a season of 106 victories ends in disappointment. A third consecutive division title was the necessary first step, but the objective was to correct the World Series losses of the last two years.

They said as much when they emerged from that Great Race with the San Francisco Giants. Understandably, they took a different perspective after their elimination.

No, they didn’t put the cart before the horse, they didn’t put too much pressure on themselves to win the World Series before they won the playoffs, even though Hall of Famer Joe Morgan wrote in the Atlanta Constitution that they did, making it a “World Series-or-bust year.”

“Sometimes that plays on your mind when you get in a tight situation,” Morgan said in his postseason column.

Justice now disagreed.

“If we had been caught up in that, we wouldn’t have even won our division,” he said. “We had more pressure in the race with the Giants than we had here.

“We played great baseball all summer with everybody gunning for us. I mean, we didn’t succumb to pressure here, our magic just ran out and nobody is going to give the Phillies enough credit.

“They played better than we did for six games. We left a thousand guys on base. Some of us didn’t swing the bat well, but their pitchers had something to do with that.”

Disappointed?

“Of course,” he said. “We had our own expectations and we know that people will start saying we can’t win the big one again, but we have a lot to be proud of. You can’t minimize what we’ve done the last three years.”

Terry Pendleton agreed.

“If people want to start calling us the Buffalo Bills of baseball, tell them this,” he said. “How many teams have been sitting home the last three years wishing they had the opportunities we’ve had?

“It’s a big disappointment because our goal every year is to win the World Series, but we didn’t leave our emotions in the division race and didn’t pin them on the World Series. The reason we lost is in the other clubhouse. They beat our tail for three straight games, and I can’t remember when that happened. They pitched well and played well, and we didn’t get the key hits.”

The Braves outhit and outscored the Phillies, but only because of the routs in Games 2 and 3. Atlanta scored seven runs in its first three-game losing streak since Aug. 5-8.

Justice was denied in the playoffs, batting .143. Ron Gant hit .185. Mark Lemke batted .208 and made two critical errors. The first led to two unearned runs in the 2-1 loss in Game 4, and the second produced another unearned run in Game 6, when the Braves produced only five hits in eight innings off Tommy Greene, who failed to go three innings in Game 2.

Greg Maddux had hoped to force a Game 7 for the Braves but was more sigh than Cy and said the Morandini grounder that caromed off his right calf in the first inning wasn’t a factor.

The Phillies got six hits and six runs in 5 2/3 innings off him, but Maddux said, “I really didn’t think I was struggling. I thought I threw well.”

The window may have closed for this particular group of Braves.

Otis Nixon has an option on ’94 and may opt for free agency if told Deion Sanders is taking over in center, as expected. Gant could be traded for a reliable reliever of the type Atlanta missed in the playoffs, particularly since Ryan Klesko has been moved from first base to left field.

The ’94 lineup may include Klesko, catcher Javier Lopez and infielder Chipper Jones, prospect of prospects.

“We had the highest of expectations and are disappointed we didn’t attain them,” General Manager John Schuerholz said, “but we also have reasons to be proud. We have a strong team that should be strong for a while.”

Was it a team caught up in its own expectations, too dispassionate and detached in a playoff it viewed as a steppingstone to a World Series it had to win? If so, Team Cool is face to face with the reality of a cold winter.