After a 2023 season that saw the Atlanta Braves finish with MLB’s best record of 104-58, expectations were high once again entering the 2024 season.
Many expected this star-studded Braves squad to go toe-to-toe with the talent-heavy roster of the Los Angeles Dodgers as MLB’s top two organizations.
But unfortunately for the Braves those projections did not become reality. As the Dodgers took their throne atop the league with an MLB-best 98-win season and then went on to capture the 2024 World Series title.
The Braves finished the year at 89-73, just squeaking into one of the final two NL Wild Card spots on the final day of the season, before being bounced by the San Diego Padres in a Wild Card series sweep.
What lead them to this was a series of major injuries to game changing pieces on the roster, along with several talented pieces simply having down years from the blistering 2023 campaigns.
And while the curtain may be closed on the 2024 season, it’s left its mark on the Braves’ organization, as some major questions loom for this team as they prepare for 2025.
What Output Will They Get From The Stars in Their Lineup?
While it wasn’t all bad for the Braves in a season where they failed to live up to initial expectations, their lineup certainly held its fair share of gloom, whether it be injuries or just down years from some of their biggest names.
Ronald Acuña Jr.
Losing a four-time All-Star and reigning NL MVP is certainly not a recipe for success, as the Braves found out after Acuña went down with a torn ACL in May. The good news is he should be back in 2025, but the question remains on when he will return and how he will look.
While this isn’t the first time he’s gone through this scenario, having suffered a torn ACL in the other knee back in 2021, when the Braves went on to win the World Series.
After a 2021 campaign that saw him hit .283 with a .990 OPS before landing on the shelf, Acuña fell off from his superstar standards when he came back the following season. That 2022 season, he played in 119 games and hit .266 with a .764 OPS, due to a 183-point drop in his SLG.
We would later learn not to read too much into the down-year, as Acuña followed it up with an MVP season in 2023. Now he goes through the exact same rehab process, and hopes for quicker results upon his return.
While it is doubtful he will steal 73 bases again in 2025, the Braves hope he can find some middle ground between being the MVP, and what he was coming off this injury the first time in 2022.
Given the poor regression of some other stars in this lineup last season, the Braves can’t afford to have that kind of output from their franchise player.
Matt Olson
After a stellar 2023 campaign that saw Olson hit 54 HR, 139 RBI with a .283/.389/.604 slash line, he failed to keep that same form in 2024.
His average dropped by 36 points to .247, his OPS by 203 points to .790, his wRC+ fell to 117 from 161 and his fWAR dropped nearly four runs from 6.5 to 2.6 and his walk rate fell four percent from 14.4 to 10.4 percent in 2024, according to FanGraphs.
And 29 homers compared to 54 the year prior, was a big offensive blow for a team that had legitimate World Series aspirations coming into last season.
The 2023 season was full of firsts Olson.
It was his first season with 40+ homers, his first full season with over 120 RBI, his first season with an average over .270, his first season with an OBP over .380 and his first full season (apart from the 11 games he played in the 2016 campaign) with a walk rate above 14%, among others.
Will They Roll with Orlando Arcia for Another Season?
Things started decently well for Orlando Arcia in Atlanta after he took over the starting role in light of the departure of Dansby Swanson to the Chicago Cubs in free agency ahead of the 2023 season.
Arcia was an All-Star for the first time in his career and ended the 2023 campaign hitting .264 with a .741 OPS, 17 HR, 65 RBI, and a 100 wRC+.
And the Braves thought highly enough of him to make him the priority to pair in the middle infield alongside Ozzie Albies instead of the then promising young name in Vaughn Grissom, who was subsequently dealt to the Boston Red Sox last offseason.
But while they certainly got a good return on Grissom, with the 2024 NL Cy Young Award winner in Sale coming back the other way, and Grissom struggled to both stay on the field and make an impact when he was in the big league lineup in Boston, Arcia himself provided the Braves little to feel comfortable about regarding the shortstop position in 2024.
In 602 plate appearances across 157 games in 2024, Arcia posted a .218/.271/.354 slash line with 17 HR, 46 RBI, and a 72 wRC+.
And as bad as he was in 2024, his underlying expected metrics paint an even bleaker picture.
Arcia sat below the 10th percentile xBA (fourth at .206), xSLG (sixth at .323), a xWOBA (second at .261), according to Baseball Savant.
Do They Have the Right Starting Pitching?
This question may sound absurd on the surface level when you look at who’s atop Atlanta’s rotation.
They have this year’s NL Cy Young Award winner in Chris Sale, the major league leader in strikeouts in 2023 in Spencer Strider, a rookie coming off a sensational season in Spencer Schwellenbach, and a sub-2.00 ERA arm in 2024 in Reynaldo López.
On paper, this is one of the strongest rotational cores in all of baseball, but as we all know, baseball isn’t played on paper. Each of these names, no matter how talented they may be, have legitimate questions surrounding them for 2025, as well as the guys beyond the top four in the rotation.
Chris Sale
Let’s start with the man of the hour, fresh off his 2024 Cy Young Award.
I feel safe saying that a majority of baseball fans, including myself, are rooting for Sale to repeat the excellent season he produced at the age of 35.
And from a statistical standpoint, there’s certainly reason to believe that this is doable for the eight-time All-Star.