Let’s dream about pipes.
The maddening and hysterical nature of the 2025 Atlanta Braves season to-date has left them in an unthinkably deep hole.
The maddening part – they’re nine games under .500, a full 15 games out of 1st place in the NL East and 9 games back in the Wild Card standings.
The hysterical part – pretty much everything under the hood suggests that the Braves should be slightly over .500. Their expected W/L per MLB.com is 35-32. Over on FanGraphs, their Pythagorean record is 35-32, and their BaseRuns record is 34-33. They have a +10 run differential, which is within +/- 15 of 8 other teams, but the Braves are anywhere between 3 and 9.5 games worse than each of those 8 teams, whose average record is 36-32. Expanding beyond just those 8 teams, each of the first six teams directly beneath the Braves in run differential rankings has a record at least four games better than the Braves. It’s all absurd.
Now, it’s true that a record slightly over .500 would still be a disappointment for a team with World Series aspirations, But that hypothetical hill would still be a much easier climb than the mountain that presently looms before them. As things stand now, they’ll need to find a way to make up a ton of ground and leapfrog several contenders if they want to find themselves playing in October for an 8th consecutive year.
So, what exactly will it take to get there?
More on the current standings
As of now, there’s a clear top 6 in the NL. The Dodgers, Cubs, and Mets lead their respective divisions, with the Cubs and Mets leading by 5+ games. Meanwhile, the Giants, Phillies, and Padres are all within a game of each other while holding onto the three Wild Card Spots.
There’s a small gap after that, where the Cardinals, Brewers, Reds, and Diamondbacks are all sitting between 2.5 and 4.5 games back of the third Wild Card spot. Then there’s another gap, where the Braves sadly find themselves lumped together with the Nationals, Pirates, and Marlins between 8.5 and 12.5 GB of a WC spot. Then there’s a gigantic chasm, and if you’re brave enough to descend to the bottom of it, you’ll find the Rockies sitting one or two floors above hell itself.
The situation is, unfortunately, slightly more dire than it even appears on the surface. Those three teams holding the three Wild Card spots at the moment? The Braves went 1-6 vs. the Padres on the season series. They’re 3-3 vs. the Phillies with 7 left to play, and 0-3 vs. the Giants with 3 left to play. This means they’ve already lost the tiebreaker to the Padres, and they’ll need to play well vs. Philly and/or sweep the Giants when they come to Atlanta in July if they want to avoid losing the tiebreakers to the other two.
As for the four other teams ahead of the Braves that are contending for a Wild Card spot – the Braves are done with Arizona, losing the season series 2-4 by getting swept in comical fashion last week. They are 3-1 vs. Cincinnati with 3 left to play, 2-1 vs. St. Louis with 3 left to play, and 2-1 vs. Milwaukee after triumphantly completing their first series victory in four weeks on Wednesday behind Spencer Schwellenbach’s complete game.
All in all, Atlanta has a few unlikely options at their disposal:
- Play well vs. Philly and tie them in the standings
- Sweep San Francisco to tie them in the standings AND come out with a better record vs. the NL East than SF manages vs. the NL West
- Leapfrog San Francisco and/or San Diego by at least one game. And if another team or two also leapfrogs SD and/or SF, hope that it’s not Arizona so that you can potentially hold the tiebreaker in the event that they have the same record as Atlanta.
What’s It Gonna Take?
We’ve seen three years of the 3-WC team playoff format. The team with the lowest win total to land the third Wild Card was the 84-win Diamondbacks in 2023, ultimately won the pennant before falling to the Rangers in the World Series. The Marlins also landed the second Wild Card with 84 wins that year, pulling something like the inverse of the 2025 Braves by going 33-14 in one-run games. The highest win total to miss the playoffs was also the Diamondbacks, when they finished in a three-way tie. The average win total for third wild card teams across both leagues is 86.8 wins, and the average win total for all Wild Card teams since 2022 is 88.6 with a median of 89.
So, in theory, 87 wins could be enough to sneak in. The projections still believe that – as of now, FanGraphs projects the Padres to take the 3rd Wild Card spot with 85 wins. But, given the depth of the NL, and the Braves records vs. SD and SF, and the fact that the currently-third-WC Padres are on pace for 92 wins – the Braves probably need to shoot for 90 wins if they want to be safe.
The Braves are currently 29-38. An 87-win season would require a 58-37 rest-of-season record, meaning they would need to play at a 99-win pace the rest of the way. A 90-win season would take a 61-34 record, or a 104-win pace.
To put it plainly, they’ll need to start playing like the 2022-2023 Braves if they want to make the playoffs. And they’ll need to start right now.
The good news is that the computers still love the Braves roster, generously giving them the second-best projection of any MLB team for the rest of the season, behind only the Dodgers. That tracks with their pre-season projections, which also saw the Braves as MLB’s second-best team. FanGraphs also ranks the Braves as having the fourth-easiest strength-of-schedule for the rest of the season, behind only the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Cardinals.
The bad news is that, even if the Braves played at the pace FanGraphs projects them for – which, again, is the second-best projection in MLB – they would still finish with just 83 wins. Their model, which is perhaps more bullish on the Braves than anybody else, gives the Braves a 27.6% chance of finding a way in.
They’re going to need to outperform their already-lofty projections, in a season that has seen them do nothing but underperform so far.
Clawback Scenarios
The big picture is set, so let’s take a look at what this might look like in practice.
Pre All-Star Break binge
We’re about a month away from the first Atlanta-based All-Star Game since the year 2000. The schedule until then looks like this:
- COL x3
- NYM x3
- @MIA x3
- @NYM x4
- PHI x3
- LAA x3
- BAL x3
- @ATH x3
- @STL x3
If the Braves win every one of those series – no sweeps, just series wins – they’d enter the break a game over .500. If they sweep two of the 3-game series but split the series in New York, they would be three games over .500. In the most irresponsibly optimistic scenario I can imagine – win every series while sweeping at least two of the three-game series – they’d be five games over .500.
Even if this most optimistic scenario happened, the Padres would need to go 12-17 in their 29 games heading into the break for the Braves to take a half-game lead over them. On that note, the Padres could be a team to watch closely over the next month, because that 29-game stretch consists of 4 vs. LAD, 6 vs. PHI, 7 vs. ARI, 3 vs. KC, 3 vs. WAS, and 3 vs. TEX.
Pre-Deadline Requirements
This is probably the most important one. The team needs to make a case to Alex Anthopoulos that they are worth investing in at the deadline (if you want my thoughts on how the team was “invested in” over the offseason, you can read those here).
There are 40 games between now and the trade deadline. A 25-15 record to get them at least a game over .500 could be the prerequisite to become buyers. While the schedule before the All-Star break may seem opportunistic, all 12 of their post-break games that lead up to the deadline will be against contenders of some variety (NYY, SF, TEX, KC). If you haven’t gotten the idea by now, they need to play their best baseball the rest of the way, but that is especially true in the short-term. The next six weeks are crucial.
What if they won every single series the rest of the season?
Just for fun, let’s say the Braves go unconscious the rest of the way. They listen to the Bobby Cox wisdom from Brian Snitker’s lips and win every series. No sweeps, just series wins. We’ll even give them four wins in the 5-game series vs. Miami that includes a makeup game from the home-opening weekend’s rainout.
If they accomplish this unbelievable feat, they’ll finish with 94 wins. Easily a playoff team, but the Mets are on pace for 106 wins and projected to finish with 95 wins, so it’s most likely not enough to reclaim the division crown.
Final Thoughts
I knew the Braves were in terrible shape, but this exercise was still pretty disheartening. There’s a way for the Braves to claw their way back into the race, but it is likely going to take a combination of them playing out of their minds while several other NL teams crater. It’s particularly depressing to think that even if they won every single series the rest of the way, they could still fall short of a division title.
The Braves have surprised us before, though. They’ve often gotten hot in June and July, with Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, and Matt Olson standing out as players who have played at MVP levels from the months of June through September throughout their careers. They’ll need health. They’ll need Harris and Ozzie Albies to hit more than they have to-date. They’ll need Spencer Strider and Raisel Iglesias to rediscover their lethal forms. They’ll need Austin Riley to catch up to Matt Olson and Ronald Acuña Jr. as high-impact bats, and they’ll need Jurickson Profar to come back from his suspension as the on-base machine we’d hoped he’d be before the season began.
It’s going to take just about everything going right, but maybe the universe owes them that after all that’s gone wrong over the past 14 months or so.