August 2025 will go down as a weird month in the Braves’ cream-of-the-disappointment-crop season. It was the first month played in essentially total irrelevance, as the Braves were still hanging out there with decent playoff odds in early July. It was also their first winning month of 2025. 16-13 isn’t spectacular, but if a team manages to go 16-13 over and over, they win 89 games and probably make the playoffs. (By the way, the Braves’ .320 winning percentage July was their worst month since April
2016.)
I’m not sure that there’s particular reason to feel heartened by the Braves in August, though. Some of it was just a natural balancing — the Braves had the league’s eighth-best month record-wise, but finished just 13th in position player fWAR and 22nd in pitching fWAR. Those tallies suggest something like a 13-16 or 14-15 month based on WAR-wins, and not the actual good month they had. The month was basically a stars-and-scrubs-esque thing, too, with a quartet of Jurickson Profar, Michael Harris II, Matt Olson, and Drake Baldwin being the only guys doing anything offensively, and a mix of Hurston Waldrep, Raisel Iglesias, and then Joey Wentz and Bryce Elder not getting obliterated by homers despite not pitching all that well helping out on the pitching side.
Which brings us to September. The Braves are clearly done trying to win games. They’re not doing any fun experiments, but they’re also not trying to win games. One only has to see Hunter Stratton relieve Raisel Iglesias, who breezed through the ninth, to hold down a tenth-inning lead to figure that much. Cal Quantrill somehow survived a roster shuffle and Chris Sale’s return, which is very yeesh. But, this is a team that has Hurston Waldrep and Chris Sale now going for 40 percent of its games, and now has the ability to play a lineup more than half-filled with above-average 2025 inputs.
Projections have the central estimate going forward at 13-12. They’re favored (sometimes very slightly) in ten of their next 19, and then finish the season against the Pirates and Nationals, so pitching matchup-wise things might be more favorable. But their next 12 games are also against contenders in races right now, while they have nothing to play for and seem to realize this, so… who knows. What do you think?
