Despite Rotation Struggles, Atlanta is Still the NL Favorite

The Atlanta Braves are already being written off by some in baseball after last weekend

Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Spencer Strider (99) is expected to miss the rest of the 2024 season after suffering "damage to the UCL" / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves took some body blows over the weekend. 

The biggest, a punch right to the gut, was the news that starter Spencer Strider is getting evaluated for UCL damage and is likely heading to a 2nd Tommy John surgery that will keep him out for all of 2024 and most of 2025. 

But Max Fried struggled this weekend, as well, giving up six runs in the first inning of Saturday’s start against the Arizona Diamondbacks and sporting an ERA of 18.00 on the season. 

The weekend’s rotation news was bad enough for MLB.com to downgrade the Braves in their newest Power Rankings, promoting the Los Angeles Dodgers to the #1 spot despite losing their weekend series to the Chicago Cubs. 

But here’s the thing - Atlanta’s should still be the favorite. 

Betting markets disagree, with FanDuel having moved the World Series odds in favor of Los Angeles as of this morning - LA’s at +310 and Atlanta’s at +500, although the Braves are still the favorite to win the NL East at -320. 

In real life, everyone’s seemingly made this same move in their minds, with the Dodgers being the primary beneficiaries of Strider's extended absence.

But here’s the thing - who was MLB’s best team in the regular season last year? The Atlanta Braves. They led MLB in wins despite losing two 30-game starters from 2022 in Max Fried and Kyle Wright for a majority of the season, a duo that combined for 35 wins and 365.2 innings.  

And the reason is that offense. The same offense that led MLB in runs and tied the single-season homer record (307) powered the Braves to two victories iover the weekend after Atlanta got subpar performances from starters Strider and Fried. 

And what has Atlanta done to that offense? Improved it. They replaced the combo of Eddie Rosario and Kevin Pillar with Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall, raising both the ceiling and the floor, as well as improving the outfield defense significantly. 

So, to recap: Atlanta returned nine of their top ten starters on offense, improved the outfield defense and bullpen, and made moves to give themselves more postseason starter options with the acquisition of Chris Sale. 

Meanwhile, the Dodgers spent over $1.4 billion dollars to improve the rotation and DH spot, but still don’t have a shortstop and are stuck playing Mookie Betts at the position, to mixed results.

(And for those of you who have seen a few highlights of Mookie at shortstop and think he’s doing fine, he has already committed two errors in just 72 innings at short and is already at -1 Outs Above Average. I think, at best, he’ll be average at the position, but the jury’s out of if he can maintain the same offensive performance with the heightened physical demands of playing shortstop over a full season. You don’t normally see players move to more demanding positions after the age of 30 for a reason.) 

But it’s fine, I get it - Adding Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the rotation, combined with that top of the lineup trio of Mookie Betts, Shoehi Ohtani and Freddie Freeman is a tantalizing story and everyone’s enamored with the names. 

But Atlanta’s done it before, and it’d be wise to not count them out so early.