ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel has released his annual ranking of each Major League Baseball team’s core talent pool. McDaniel started doing this back in 2022 and in each season ever since then, the Atlanta Braves have been ranked very highly in each of those rankings. The good news is that even though this has been a disastrous season for Atlanta, McDaniel’s outlook on their core hasn’t changed too much. While they have been knocked off of their perch of being No. 1 in 2022 and 2023 and being No. 2 in 2024,
a Top-5 ranking here in 2025 is still nothing to sneeze at.
Here’s part of McDaniel’s reasoning behind his high ranking for the Braves (and I highly suggest that y’all go ahead and check out the entire thing just to get a lay of the land as far as the outlook for MLB goes):
This core has been so good for years, as you can see by the organization’s past ranks, that the Braves’ poor 2025 season still can’t knock them out of the top five. [Hurston] Waldrep, [Didier] Fuentes, and [J.R.] Ritchie could all be answers to starting pitching needs in 2026, while [AJ] Smith-Shawver, [Owen] Murphy, and Cam Caminiti could be answers in 2027.
For this exercise, Ronald Acuña Jr. was considered as Atlanta’s lone “Elite” talent with players like Drake Baldwin, Sean Murphy, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Spencer Schwellenbach and Spencer Strider being the “Plus” talent surrounding him. While this has been a poor season in all regards, it’s certainly hard to dispute the fact that when these players are performing as expected, this is still a formidable team to deal with. The staggering amount of one-run losses that this team has suffered through this season is a tiny consolation and a reminder that things could have maybe been better this season had they gotten a bit more luck in those one-run games. That’s still no excuse for how badly this season has gone but it’s at least clear that all hope is certainly not lost for the future — not with a core that is still incredibly strong if/when they return to form.
However, what’s made this pretty concerning is the fact that two of Atlanta’s four divisional foes are now rated ahead of the Braves in these rankings. The Phillies have gone from “Top-5” in 2024 to “Top-3” here in 2025, and the Mets have cracked the Top-5 at No. 4 after spending the past three seasons in the latter half of the Top-10. Both of these teams appear to be here to stay as contenders for now and the foreseeable future, which means that the margin for error in Atlanta has continued to shrink.
Atlanta really can’t afford to have many more offseasons like the one they had this past season and expect to remain a consistent contender in the NL East. The Phillies have ownership that’s willing to pay any price necessary to improve their baseball operations and the Mets have a multi-billionaire owner who actually acts and operates like a multi-billionaire who is a baseball fan, so the Braves will have to remain on their toes if they want to make sure that they remain relevant as a contender going forward. As usual, we’ll see what happens going forward.
