Five Things I Believe About the Atlanta Braves Right Now
The All-Star break isn't really the halfway point of the season, but it's the perfect time to separate what's temporary from what I think is here to stay.
Baseball, when you think about it, is a weird sport.
Of the four major sports, it’s the one most beholden to its own history, even though almost everything about the game has changed over the past century.
They used to pitch underhand. Home runs once required the batter to circle the bases before the defense could chase the ball down beyond a rope marking the edge of the outfield. No two ballparks are alike in their dimensions. Even many of the statistics we now take for granted didn’t exist for decades; RBIs didn’t become an official statistic until 1920, and saves weren’t recognized until 1969.
And one of baseball’s stranger traditions is calling the All-Star break the “halfway point” of the season, even though it almost never is.
This year, the Braves reached the break after 95 games, meaning the true halfway point quietly came and went two weeks ago.
Baseball has never been especially interested in technical accuracy, though. We still call some outings ‘quality’ starts, even if they produce a 4.50 ERA, and ‘saves’, even when nobody was really in danger.1
So while this isn’t really a halfway report card, it is a good time to take stock of where Atlanta actually stands.
After 95 games, here's where I think this team stands.
Let’s talk about it.
I Still Believe This Offense Can Carry the Braves
The Atlanta Braves peaked at 24 games over .500 in early June, sitting at 45-21, and the Dodgers and Brewers just finally passed that mark last week, after nearly 30 more games than Atlanta had.
And while the Braves had quality pitching contributions through that stretch from both the rotation and the bullpen, the offense was the real star of the show. Through the end of April, no one had scored more runs than Atlanta’s 177. The Braves were third in home runs with 43, 2nd in slug at .449, and third in wOBA at .342.
From an individual perspective, the Braves had plenty to celebrate. Drake Baldwin continued his ascension as one of the best offensive catchers in baseball, with his 144 wRC+ through the end of April finishing as one of the best marks at the position. Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II both showed that their respective slumps from the first half of 2025 were aberrations, while Matt Olson continued his team-leading excellence at the plate.
And several of the role players showed the ability to step up when it mattered. Mauricio Dubón has been reinvigorated in Atlanta, having a career offensive year, while Dominic Smith proved to be an incredibly influential addition, providing several high-leverage hits.
But despite the hot start, Atlanta’s offense was the worst in the sport in the month of June.
Runs: 30th (77)
Home runs: 30th (19)
OPS: 30th (.599)
wRC+: 30th (64)
And there are several factors that influenced this. Ronald Acuña Jr. is having a very un-Acuña-like season, hitting .251 with a .793 OPS in the 53 games he’s played around two separate injured list stints for a hamstring injury. Drake Baldwin slumped after returning from a one-month absence for an oblique injury, going 5-63 in his first 16 games back from the IL. Austin Riley is having a career-worst .207/.288/.329 line through the first 95 games.
The good news is that things already appear to be stabilizing in July, with Atlanta’s wRC+ surging to 106 and their 67 runs scored already on the verge of eclipsing June’s production after just 12 games. Matt Olson has hit five homers already, while Harris has driven in ten, both Olson and Albies have scored ten times, and Drake Baldwin has scored seven times and driven in seven while walking more than he’s struck out.
This isn’t a perfect lineup - designated hitter has officially become a problem, while they still need a third outfielder - but it’s also not the worst offense in baseball. The talent is still here, and there’s enough firepower to carry this club if even one or two underperforming bats return to form.
And the good news is, those bats may be on the way. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ha-Seong Kim both started a rehab assignment on Monday, while catcher Sean Murphy has been taking batting practice recently and is on the verge of his own rehab assignment.
That's why I still believe this lineup is capable of carrying the Braves into October.
The Bullpen Is Good Enough to Win a Championship
We’ve seen Walt Weiss aggressively deploy Atlanta’s bullpen to ‘chase’ wins, usually succeeding. The backend quartet of closer Raisel Iglesias (a first-time All Star at the age of 35), setup men Robert Suarez and Dylan Lee, and youngster Didier Fuentes deserve a lot of that credit.
The Braves have also gotten clutch performances from other middle relievers like Tyler Kinley (10 holds), Dylan Dodd (one save, four holds), and even four different three-inning saves from various long men.
Atlanta’s been able to mix and match their late-inning relievers to shorten games, occasionally pulling their starters short of five innings and letting a rested bullpen shut down the opposing offense for the back half of the contest. That’s a blueprint that is normally only seen in the postseason, but the Braves are already practiced at it.
The lingering questions are twofold here:
The first is if the relievers can stay healthy enough to continue this - We’ve seen Weiss back off this aggressiveness a bit recently as the trio of Iglesias, Kinley, and Suarez have all spent time on the injured list, while Fuentes has been handled with kid gloves, only throwing on back-to-back days once this season.
The other question is if the rotation can put them into position to actually get those wins.
But at the end of the day, postseason baseball is often decided by relief pitching.
Atlanta already has the formula every contender wants: get through five or six innings with a lead, then hand the ball to a dominant bullpen.
That's why I believe this bullpen is already built for postseason baseball.
The Rotation Still Has More Questions Than Answers
Atlanta has used eleven different starters this season, not quite last season’s astronomical total of 19, but still more than you’d like for just barely being past the halfway mark of the schedule.
In 1948, the Boston Braves held on to win the National League pennant by virtue of winning 11 of their final 15 games. Nine of those 15 games were started by the rotation duo of Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, prompting Boston Post sports editor Gerald V. Hern to pen the following poem:
“First we’ll use Spahn then we’ll use Sain
Then an off day, followed by rain
Back will come Spahn, followed by Sain
And followed, we hope, by two days of rain”
The 2026 version of this would look something like, “Chris Sale...and a lot of unanswered questions.”
UPDATE: “Chris Sale and four days of hail” was right there and I'm annoyed I didn't think of it at the time.
Outside of Sale, the best of the rest have been mostly adequate, using the most charitable description. Veteran lefty Martín Pérez is pretty much the best of the rest, at a 3.54 ERA, but he’s currently on the injured list. Grant Holmes (3.78 as a starter) and Reynaldo López (3.63 rotation ERA) are holding spots for now, but both have spent time in the bullpen this season, as has Pérez.
The Braves have seen Bryce Elder pull the Jekyll and Hyde act again this season, with a 1.97 ERA through his first 11 starts and an 8.47 in his last seven. Several young arms have come up and struggled out of the rotation, including JR Ritchie (5.55 ERA in 7GS) and Hurston Waldrep (10.38 ERA in 2GS), while Spencer Strider has battled multiple injuries to a 5.31 ERA in his eight starts.
Atlanta knows, as of now, that Chris Sale will start game one of any postseason series. Game two is anyone’s guess. It could be one of these guys currently in the majors, like Holmes or López. It could be someone in the minors, like Waldrep or prospect Owen Murphy, or someone on the injured list like AJ Smith-Shawver or Spencer Schwellenbach.
The reality is that there are talented arms here; there just aren’t enough certainties, and that's why I believe starting pitching remains Atlanta's biggest question.
I Still Believe This Team Can Win the National League East
Atlanta’s slump in June, where everything went wrong en route to a 9-14 month, had plenty of fans writing them off: The offense is too inconsistent. The rotation is too long on questions and too short on certainty. The bullpen can’t seem to stay fully healthy and make up for that rotation, either, because Walt Weiss’ aggressiveness that was a virtue in the first part of the season is now a liability, apparently.
But I’m not ready to give up yet.
Atlanta has survived its worst stretch of the season. Reinforcements are coming, and the core (mostly) remains championship-caliber. Philadelphia, while they’ve surged up the standings under interim manager Don Mattingly, are still doing it through an outlier record in one-run games (19-6) versus through sustainable inputs. Their underlying metrics paint a much different picture of their 54-43 record, as it’s built on a negative run differential of -10, which projects to a 47-50 record.
I’m not saying that everything is copacetic and you can cruise to October. Winning the division won’t happen by accident, but the Braves are still in first place despite the adversity, and even if that were to change, they have seven games versus the Phillies in September. That's why I'm not ready to hand the division to Philadelphia.
This Isn’t the Year to Play It Safe at the Trade Deadline
The Atlanta Braves are positioned to contend for one of the league’s top two seeds for the first time since 2023. This is not the season to hold onto the organization’s prospects in the interest of honoring the team’s competitive window in three seasons.
Whether that's an impact starter, another bat, or both, additions need to be made.
And it’s not going to be easy - there are currently only six teams that are more than 6.5 games out of a Wild Card spot. The Boston Red Sox, who had all but already packed the bags of starter Sonny Gray for the trade deadline, are 14-2 since the last week of June and have closed to within a half-game of the final playoff spot in the American League.
It’s not an easy tightrope for Atlanta to walk. The supply of #2 starters won’t come close to meeting the demand, while most of the offensive upgrades out there will have both high prices and some sort of flaws. And most decisions to sell likely won’t come until August 1st, if not the 2nd or even on deadline day of the 3rd.
But this isn’t the season to sit back and wait for the market to shake out. That's why I believe this is the year Alex Anthopoulos has to push his chips into the middle.
Final Thoughts
This team isn’t perfect.
It has flaws, some of them significant.
But the Braves also have something many contenders don’t: a championship-caliber foundation that’s already in place.
The Braves don’t need to become a different baseball team after the All-Star break.
They just need to become the version of themselves we saw through the season’s first two months.
If they do, and if Alex Anthopoulos gives them the reinforcements they need, there’s still every reason to believe this season’s best baseball is still ahead.
Dad!