Things have gone south for the Braves, to put it mildly. The team needs to find its footing soon, or it will face complicated questions leading into the trade deadline.
Here are a few disturbing numbers about the team’s recent play:
11.5: The Braves are 11.5 games out in the National League East. It’s the largest division deficit they’ve experienced during this seven-year run of postseason berths. During their 2021 championship season, they were once eight games back. A year later, they were 10.5 games back June 1, yet reemerged to win the division anyway.
This time, though, it will be a much tougher uphill climb, given the caliber of teams in front of them — the Phillies and Mets are World Series hopefuls — and how dreadful the Braves have performed.
7: For a while, conversation had shifted from the Braves’ 0-7 start and took a more encouraging tone. They climbed above .500 during a road trip in Boston last month and appeared to be clawing their way back into the mix.
But when they begin play June 6, they’ll be seven games under .500 again. They’re 27-27 since their winless West Coast trip to open the season. That’s nowhere near good enough to overcome that early result.
10-20: The Braves have lost 20 of their 30 road games. They now travel to San Francisco and Milwaukee to oppose two NL postseason contenders. A 1-5 or 2-4 result would be another blow. If the Braves are going to turn this around, it needs to happen soon. They can’t afford another poor road showing, particularly when they’re only 17-14 at Truist Park.
3: The Braves have a better record than only three NL teams: the historically awful Rockies (12-50), the spending-allergic Pirates (23-39) and the perpetually bad Marlins (23-37). Eight NL teams have winning records. That excludes the 31-31 Diamondbacks, who just swept the Braves to secure the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Reds (30-33) and Nationals (29-32) are also two games above the Braves in the wild-card hunt.
35.8%: The Braves’ postseason odds have plummeted to 35.8% on FanGraphs, which many might still deem optimistic. But they began the year with a 93.4% chance at the postseason. Their World Series odds at that time were 15.8%, the only team given better than a 6% chance besides the champion Dodgers (22.9%). The Braves’ World Series odds are now at 3.4%.
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