Braves Off to Red Hot Start

For Braves Nation, it’s starting to feel a lot like 2023.

Three years ago, the Atlanta Braves raced out to a 26-15 start en route to wrapping up the NL East crown by mid-September and racking up 104 regular-season wins.

This year, the Braves sport an even more impressive record (28-13) at the quarter mark of the season while owning a 9-game cushion in a surprisingly weak NL East. The club is riding a nice wave of momentum into the second half of May and there’s well-deserved buzz around baseball — especially after its pair of consecutive breezy 7-2 wins over the Los Angeles Dodgers to take the road series against the two-time defending champs. But one question will hover over Truist Park all summer: Will this year’s Braves team — one anchored by a deep lineup that bears strong resemblance to the 2023 edition — meet a different fate than that of the 2023 team once October dawns?

Coming off a disastrous, injury-riddled 2025 season, this year’s Braves squad under new manager Walt Weiss, the clear favorite to win NL Manager of the Year, appears well positioned to make a deep postseason run. All-Stars Spencer Strider and Sean Murphy have recently been activated from the injured list and Ha-Seong Kim is inching closer to his big league return. Ozzie Albies has a chance to have one of the greatest offensive seasons ever for a second baseman — just like during his 2023 All-Star season. Matt Olson is squarely in the conversation for NL MVP and ace Chris Sale projects to be in the mix for NL Cy Young. Indeed, both veterans’ careers are on a Cooperstown trajectory.

Showing no signs of any sophomore slump, reigning NL Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin has emerged as one of the best offensive catchers in baseball. Atlanta has only lost one series all year and the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets — their two NL East rivals with starry rosters and bloated payrolls — don’t loom as a threat at this hour. When it comes to the ninth inning, there’s no better offense in baseball than Atlanta’s.

While it’s not yet even Memorial Day, it’s hard to imagine the Braves won’t be in the running alongside the Dodgers, San Diego Padres, and Chicago Cubs for one of the two coveted first-round postseason byes come late summer. For that matter, a potential World Series matchup against Max Fried and the New York Yankees doesn’t appear to be a fantasy. That’s how promising the first seven-plus weeks of the post-Brian Snitker era have been.

“There’s no babysitting, and that’s the last thing you want to do in a position of leadership. I don’t have to worry about that with these guys. We’ve got great veterans, pros. These guys show up every day. They love coming to the park. They enjoy being around each other. They like working. They like competing. We’ve got a lot of models for the young players to look at,” Weiss, the 49th manager in Braves franchise history who formerly skippered the Colorado Rockies, told the MLB Network during a pregame interview on April 30.

Going into the season, there were legitimate questions how the Braves would fare with All-Star outfielder Jurickson Profar ruled ineligible for the entire year after his appeal of a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs was resolved. There was no telling how long promising young pitcher Spencer Schwellenbach was going to be sidelined with a bum elbow. The severity of the newly-acquired Kim’s right middle finger injury was of concern. And yet, even without the services of those three critical players, the Braves have kept rolling.

“Sometimes these things don’t make sense in our game. You do the math and it doesn’t add up,” added Weiss. “We’re far from full strength, but we’re playing really well. It doesn’t mean when we get all of our pieces back, we’re going to play better. This game is hard to figure out sometimes.”

It’s difficult to pinpoint any real cause for concern, but one red flag of sorts has been an occasionally leaky bullpen in the early-to-mid innings. While the back end of the pen has been spectacular with untouchable closer Raisel Iglesias, setup man Robert Suarez, and late-inning reliever Dylan Lee having career years thus far, middle relievers Aaron Bummer, José Suarez, and Joel Payamps have largely scuffled [Suarez and Payamps have since been released]. Perhaps even more alarmingly, right fielder Ronald Acuña, Jr. has been shelved with a strained left hamstring for well over a week now and there’s no firm date for his return. The 2023 NL MVP did some light jogging in the Dodger Stadium outfield on Sunday and could be activated from the injured list this week, but that’s far from a given.

“It’s still going to be a little time,” Weiss told reporters Sunday. “[Acuña’s] progressing very well. I saw him out there doing the drills, and he looks good. It’s a big leap from doing the little agility drills and then having to run full speed. So, he’s got some boxes to check.”

Of course, there’s not a team in baseball that isn’t flawed or at least slightly derailed by injuries and the Braves are in as good of shape as any club going into the season’s second quarter. Thus far, it’s been quite a drastic turnaround from last year and it seems safe to project Atlanta having a dynamic presence at this year’s All-Star Game hosted by the Phillies, their longtime postseason nemesis.

As Weiss said, “There haven’t been any prolonged stretches where we haven’t been playing good baseball.”