All good things must come to an end and that includes runs of consecutive winning seasons. From the 2018 season through the 2024 season, the Atlanta Braves enjoyed seven-straight seasons of enjoying a winning record — with six of those winning seasons bearing the fruit of NL East titles and of course, that magical run to the 2021 World Series championship.
The Braves won’t be able to make it eight winning seasons in a row. In the 147th game of the season, the Braves dropped one to the Houston Astros
(the club they beat in the 2021 World Series, mind you) in order to lose their 82nd game of the season, confirming this as their first losing season since 2017. Back in the inaugural season of what is now known as Truist Park, the Braves went into the season with 80-to-1 odds to win the World Series — nobody was expecting them to do much of anything (other than to maybe be “fun to watch”) and of course, it ended with the bombshell that then-General Manager John Coppolella would soon be banned from baseball for illegal activities in the International Free Agency market.
Fast forward to 2025 and the expectations could not have been any higher or different for this year’s Braves team. It was widely predicted that this season’s team would have been a Postseason contender bare minimum, with some outlets even saying that this team was a World Series contender. Instead, the team came out of the gates with a dreadful 0-7 start out West against the Padres and Dodgers while losing Reynaldo López for the season and Jurickson Profar for 80 games due to a PED suspension.
The hope back then was that this would be a blip and for a while, the Braves scratched and clawed their way to a game over .500 at the end of action on May 18. Atlanta stayed over .500 for exactly one day and they never saw those lofty heights again for the rest of the season, as the 0-7 start with two key players being missing for the long term ended up being an omen rather than a blip. After going over .500 with a win over the Red Sox on the aforementioned date of May 18, the Braves proceeded to go 41-58 from that point forward up until they dropped their 82nd game of the season. It’s looking likely that they’ll go ahead and lose 90 games for the first time since 2017 as well. For what it’s worth, it took the 2017 Braves 149 games before they eventually succumbed to a losing season, so you can get whatever mileage you can out of that particular feat.
Needless to say, this is an abject failure for the Braves and one that leaves the team with more questions going forward than answers. Will this lineup with the current core of players ever hit the vein of consistency that defined their success over the past few seasons? Can the rotation bounce back after being ravaged by injury? Will the bullpen be functional next season? Will Brian Snitker even be around as the team’s manager? It’s all up in the air as this team certainly has an intriguing offseason ahead of it.
Whatever they decide to do in the offseason, it’s clear that some type of reset is needed. Whether it be a symbolic reset where the team gives a serious rethink to the practices and approaches that got them to this point or if it’s an actual reset that involves some serious personnel changes, something’s got to change because it’s clear that they can’t keep on going doing the same thing and expect to return to relevancy. We’ll see what happens and what answers we get once the offseason finally rolls around but for now, it’s time to se just how bad this is going to get before the end finally arrives once the sun sets on September 28.
