The Atlanta Braves, for the second consecutive season, have fallen to the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS despite a stellar regular season in which they won 100+ games. The Braves, despite their regular season excellence, simply could not come up with any answers on how to slow down a Phillies team that thrives in the face of adversity. Even Spencer Strider himself, who pitched two solid outings for the Braves in the NLDS, is scraping the bottom of the barrel in search for what the team needs to exorcise their playoff demons.

But with a long, cold offseason ahead of the Braves, all they could do now is rue the missed opportunities they had and have a long hard think about what they must do to avoid the same pitfalls they've encountered in the past. At least the Braves ace is looking forward to whatever changes the team can conjure up in preparation for the 2024 season.

Obviously, we're going to have to make an adjustment with the way we handle the postseason and the way that we focus and prepare for it,” Strider said, per Mark Bowman of MLB.com.

It's unclear, however, from an objective point of view, what the Braves must do to prevent another early playoff exit. As fans would know, the MLB playoffs is defined by its unpredictability. Unlike the regular season in which teams have 162 games to normalize their performance-levels, the postseason is an entirely different animal. Three games of cold-hitting from the team's best guys is nothing but a dent in the grand scheme of the regular season, but in the postseason, it can prove to be all the difference between winning and losing.

The Braves also cannot control what team will end up being their playoff opponent; of course, as Brian Snitker said, their goal first and foremost is to win the NL East. And if that ends up being the case in 2024, and if the Philadelphia Phillies enter the playoffs as a Wild Card team yet again, then the Braves will have to just pray to the baseball gods that they don't match up with them in next year's NLDS.