Strong finish to frustrating season creates ‘what ifs’ for Braves
I understand if Braves backers don’t want to hear about what could have been for their team this season. Probably many of them turned their attention elsewhere once football and fall obligations came into focus. Certainly, president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos can’t fall into the trap of making too-rosy evaluations of the roster as he looks to next season.
Still, it’s hard for me not to ask “what if” about the Braves considering they’ve been one of the best teams in baseball for a quarter of the season. What might have been for the Braves if not for so many injuries to key players?
“It’s definitely interesting, seeing how what people expected from us and the amount of talent that’s in this locker room,” Braves catcher Drake Baldwin said. “You can say ‘what ifs’ all day long, but you’ve got to go in and, day in and day out, focus on that day and play the best baseball you can.”
Kudos to the Braves for doing it better than every NL team except the Phillies since Aug. 9. That’s the day the Braves started a run of 13 victories in 19 games. They lost 11 of their next 15 before starting a win streak that ended at 10 games with a loss to the Nationals on Wednesday.
I’m not arguing that the Braves deserve a trophy for playing good baseball for six weeks. I’m saying it’s easy to imagine that they’d be getting ready for the playoffs if not for all the injuries.
The Braves entered the season’s final weekend seven games behind in the NL wild-card standings. At pretty much any point of this season, you could find multiple players on the injured list who could help make up that gap. Several of them will still be on the IL at season’s end.
A few more runs scored and a few less prevented could have made a big difference. After losing 4-3 to the Nationals on Thursday, the Braves were 21-35 in games decided by a one-run margin.
“If we would have had our starting pitching and then got our lineup together, I would have felt really good about where we’d probably be right now,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “I think we’d be right in the thick of things.”
I think the same thing. The Braves have had so many players go down with injuries, and have played well enough despite them, that the injuries have transformed from excuses for a bad season to reasonable explanations for it.
What if the team’s top five starting pitchers hadn’t spent time on the 60-day injured list? Assuming Spencer Strider makes his scheduled start Saturday, the Braves will finish the season with only 82 starts from that group. Entering the weekend, Braves starters ranked 19th in ERA, 16th in fWAR and 14th in FIP (ERA adjusted for bad luck on batted balls).
The Braves started winning late in the season with contributions from fill-in pitchers. That’s a good development for the rotation depth in 2024, but missing so many starts from top pitchers sank their playoff chances this year.
“There’s no getting around the fact that you can’t lose five starters and expect things to go well,” Snitker said. “It can’t happen. You can lose five starters with position players, because we proved that last year. We led MLB in (runs allowed per game) and got into the playoffs.
“But that’s a big difference when you are losing (pitchers) … This game is all about pitching.”
It’s hard for even the best-hitting clubs to overcome subpar pitching over the long run. The Braves ranked 13th in runs scored per game entering this weekend. The “what ifs” include how many more runs they could have scored if not for the missing power in the lineup for much of the season.
Outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. and third baseman Austin Riley have been available for only about 60% of games. Acuna entered the weekend with the eighth-best OPS among MLB players with at least 350 plate appearances. Riley struggled with abdominal injuries for much of the season yet still had above-average production before underdoing season-ending surgery in August.
A hip injury contributed to Marcell Ozuna’s decline from his status as one of MLB’s best designated hitters. He still hit more than 20 homers. And it wasn’t an injury that sidelined outfielder Jurickson Profar, but he’s also among the “what ifs” after serving a 60-game MLB suspension for testing positive for a banned substance. He had the 11th-best OPS among outfielders with at least 350 PAs from July 2 through Thursday.
It wasn’t until July that Snitker had something close to a full lineup.
“All of a sudden, you pencil something in, and it looks pretty good,” he said.
Then Riley missed two weeks, briefly returned to the lineup, and then was out for good. Catcher Sean Murphy followed him to the IL a couple of weeks later. Second baseman Ozzie Albies suffered a season-ending injury two weeks after that.
The Braves were held back by injuries suffered by good hitters early and late in the season. But, for Snitker, the injuries to starting pitchers hurt more. The Braves made moves at the deadline to fortify the bullpen.
“Who knows? We might have went even deeper into that add” if not for the injuries to the starters, Snitker said.
It’s impossible to know for sure. That’s the frustrating part about “what ifs” that are related to injures. It’s an unsatisfying explanation because there’s no one to blame. Underperformance by some players played a role in the losing season, but the injuries were a bigger factor.
That’s not to say Anthopoulos, Snitker and Braves chairman Terry McGuirk couldn’t have done better.
The payroll that McGuirk oversees declined from opening day 2025 to 2024 after Anthopoulos said it would increase. Anthopoulos didn’t replace good relievers who left, and it’s difficult to improve the bullpen with trades until closer to the deadline. Snitker kept running Ozuna out to scuffle even though he had two catchers hitting better.
Maybe the injuries were so overwhelming that more money for player payroll, better offseason moves and smarter lineup decisions wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Add them to the list of the “what ifs” for the 2025 Braves.
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