The Braves entered 2024 with high expectations for the coming season, but their campaign was disappointing. After entering the playoffs on the finest edge, Padres unceremoniously eliminated them. It's been over seven months now, and atlanta's early exports are seven months old, and the calendar has been transformed into a new season. The fate of the team cannot say the same thing.
Indeed, the Braves started this year with a funk attitude, rather than the sly cunning and family stone varieties. A season-opening series against Padres, then headed to Chavez Ravine to face off against defending champion Defendend-Champion Dodgers, starting seven losses this season, while Reynaldo López is in 2025, if not all, in most cases, in most cases. Strider tightened his hamstring kick Monday and returned to Illinois after returning from major elbow surgery.
Even with the losses of Lopez and Strider, it didn't make 2025's 9-14 starting point the cause, but it did make things very complicated. Let's first review the Zips preseason predictions for the NL East standings.
Zips shot ranking – NL East (preseason)
| team | w | l | GB | pct | div% | restroom% | play off% | WS win % | Chapter 80 | 20th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta Warriors | 89 | 73 | – | .549 | 35.8% | 34.0% | 69.8% | 7.3% | 96.4 | 81.6 |
| Philadelphia Philadelphia | 89 | 73 | – | .549 | 34.0% | 34.6% | 68.6% | 6.6% | 96.0 | 81.5 |
| New York Metropolis | 88 | 74 | 1 | .543 | 29.5% | 35.3% | 64.8% | 5.6% | 95.0 | 80.7 |
| Washington National | 69 | 93 | 20 | .426 | 0.5% | 3.0% | 3.4% | 0.0% | 76.6 | 62.3 |
| Miami Marlin | 67 | 95 | twenty two | .414 | 0.2% | 1.3% | 1.6% | 0.0% | 73.8 | 59.0 |
Zips projection system sees Atlanta as its most popular, but with only hair, the Mets and Phillies projections are essentially as dangerous as the Brave. There is a lot of daylight between Zips and Fangraphs Depth Charts forecasts, which fixes Atlanta on the buffer distance of six wins in Philadelphia and seven wins in New York. A large part of this difference may depend on methodology. In Fangraphs' predictions, for ease of calculation, the situation and board appearance are static, which means Chris Sale will always 182 innings are expected to be thrown, Ronald Acuña Jr. always It is expected that 525 disks will appear, and so on. Zips takes the Monte Carlo method, which means that in some forecasts, the sales will throw those 182 innings, but sometimes he will reach 190, or just 150, or 100, and sometimes even 0. Telling Zips to match the time of the Fanggraphs, giving Braves exactly a 91-win projection and almost the win range of their NL East Rivals.
So, what's the difference? In short, Zips like the Braves the most if things work, but because they lack depth in most positions, they are less resilient than the Phillies or the Mets if things go wrong. Losing Lopez for a long time this season is very wrong. At least in public, the extent of Strider's hamstring injury is still unknown, but my personal belief is that the team is unlikely to be aggressive about his return after he has conducted an internal support program to rebuild the UCL.
By 2025, Zips saw the Braves’ roster with 0.550. Before the game started on Tuesday, this was when I made my prediction for this piece, winning the 11 points (the same drop as our depth chart) dropped to the .539 projection. Again, not fatal, but if you consider the rest of the season as the foot joint that starts now, the Braves start behind other contenders, not with them.
ZIPS casts the standings – NL East (4/22/25)
| team | w | l | GB | pct | div% | restroom% | play off% | WS win % | Chapter 80 | 20th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York Metropolis | 93 | 69 | – | .574 | 55.4% | 28.5% | 83.9% | 9.5% | 99.2 | 86.4 |
| Philadelphia Philadelphia | 89 | 73 | 4 | .549 | 31.2% | 37.9% | 69.0% | 6.6% | 95.6 | 82.7 |
| Atlanta Warriors | 84 | 78 | 9 | .519 | 13.1% | 31.0% | 44.1% | 3.3% | 91.0 | 77.8 |
| Miami Marlin | 69 | 93 | twenty four | .426 | 0.2% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 0.0% | 75.6 | 62.3 |
| Washington National | 69 | 93 | twenty four | .426 | 0.2% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 0.0% | 75.5 | 62.5 |
Many teams will be happy with their chances of making the playoffs, but for Atlanta, that represents the evaporation of more than a third of the playoffs in just three weeks. With both the Mets and the Phillies doing well in April, the Braves’ odds were even more significant to win the NL East, which is down nearly two-thirds since opening day.
How much help can the main supplements help the brave? How much will another injury hinder them? To answer this question, I re-invested the Atlanta playoff odds, changing the expected roster advantage at 5 percentage points intervals.
Brave playoff probability by roster intensity (4/22/25)
| Roster strength | Partition probability | Playoff probability |
|---|---|---|
| .499 | 4.4% | 20.9% |
| .504 | 5.2% | 23.3% |
| .509 | 6.0% | 25.9% |
| .514 | 7.0% | 28.8% |
| .519 | 8.0% | 31.6% |
| .524 | 9.1% | 34.6% |
| .529 | 10.4% | 37.7% |
| .534 | 11.6% | 40.8% |
| .539 | 13.1% | 44.1% |
| .544 | 14.6% | 47.4% |
| .549 | 16.3% | 50.7% |
| .554 | 18.2% | 53.9% |
| .559 | 20.2% | 57.2% |
| .564 | 22.3% | 60.4% |
| .569 | 24.6% | 63.6% |
| .574 | 27.0% | 66.7% |
| .579 | 29.3% | 69.5% |
The bottom of the chart highlights one of the problems in which the Braves make massive acquisitions: the combination of current rankings and the strength of the opponents limits the practicality of winning large deals in the division. This is important because winning the department is necessary to have a chance to skip the first round of the playoffs. If you add 40 points to the Braves, it's basically equivalent to getting Bobby Witt Jr. or Aaron Judge still Not going back to pre-season outlook all the way. Like other disappointing April competitors (such as Orioles (19 points, 20% to 39%), Twins (23%, 13% to 36%), Cardinals, 25 points, 7% to 32%), or Astros (29%), or Astros (29% Astros (29 points) (29 points, 39% to 68% to 68%), the partition probability gets a 16-percent gain less than you get than the same exercises you get.
Strangely, given that mid-season acquisitions are unlikely to have as many effects, the most logical approach to Braves might just be trying to keep everyone healthy, keep the course and cross as many fingers as possible.
But regardless of whether the Braves will be swapped substantially, if they are going to make a comeback, they'd better start as soon as possible – without Strider and Acuña, they're back from the ACL surgery for at least a few weeks. Even if another game with the Dodgers is scheduled for the first weekend in May, Zips also plans to put the softest remaining game on the Atlanta schedule in the coming weeks, with the Rockies, Reds, Pirates and Nationals in a series. To illustrate this, I predicted NL East Standings May 23 if Each NL East team will play in the expected preseason next month.
ZIPS casts the standings – NL East (5/23 scene)
| team | w | l | GB | pct | div% | restroom% | play off% | WS win % | Chapter 80 | 20th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York Metropolis | 92 | 70 | – | .568 | 59.1% | 27.9% | 87.0% | 9.8% | 97.9 | 87.1 |
| Philadelphia Philadelphia | 89 | 73 | 3 | .549 | 32.0% | 40.5% | 72.5% | 6.8% | 94.6 | 83.7 |
| Atlanta Warriors | 83 | 79 | 9 | .512 | 8.8% | 28.5% | 37.3% | 2.3% | 89.0 | 77.8 |
| Miami Marlin | 69 | 93 | twenty three | .426 | 0.0% | 0.5% | 0.6% | 0.0% | 74.3 | 63.1 |
| Washington National | 69 | 93 | twenty three | .426 | 0.0% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.0% | 74.4 | 63.5 |
In other words, if in the brave next month they just win as often as March, they will see the chance in October deterioration farther. Like last year, they can still make the playoffs like they did last year, because of the optimism they entered the season, which would be very unsatisfactory. No one wins the division in April, but you can lose a division in April and unless a turnaround happens soon, it may just be what's going on in Atlanta.
