Braves Receive One of Highest World Series Projections In FanGraphs History

The Atlanta Braves and their historically deep MLB roster are getting love from projection systems

For the Atlanta Braves, life is good...and yet, in some ways it isn't. 

Winners of 100+ games for two straight seasons and the National League East for the last six, Atlanta's had dominant regular seasons that have fizzled out in the postseason, being eliminated two straight years by the Philadelphia Phillies in the Divisional Series. 

Is 2024 going to be different? 

FanGraphs, putting out their 2024 playoff projections, have Atlanta with one of the highest World Series odds figures in the site's history, giving the Braves a 24.9% chance to win the 2024 World Series.

But of course, that's still not a guarantee of hoisting the Commissioner's Trophy at the end of the season. The last two teams to be in the same stratosphere, the 2018 Houston Astros (103 wins) and the 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers (106 wins) both lost in their respective Championship Series round those years. 

Those two teams sit behind Atlanta in the World Series odds, with the Dodgers in 2nd place at 16.9% and the Astros in 3rd at 10.8%. 

All in all, the projections are high on Atlanta's regular season, with the team receiving a 98.6% odds figure of making the postseason (and 87.8% of it being via winning the division). Only Atlanta and LA have postseason odds greater than 90%. 

Can Atlanta find postseason success in 2024?

FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens, writing their takeaways article, was pretty clear on Atlanta's status as the unquestioned favorite thanks to an offseason focused on improving their odds of advancing in the postseason:

Yeah, the Braves are ridiculous. We think they’re the best team in baseball by a wide margin. Their offense is ludicrous, of course. They lit the majors on fire in 2023. But their pitching should be better this year with a full season of Max Fried and some valuable innings from Chris Sale. They even shored up their bullpen, which now ranks among the best in baseball. Last year was no fluke; this team is just stacked across the board.
No one else is realistically playing for first in the NL East. That’s not because the Phillies are awful; we think they’re more likely than not to make the playoffs thanks to a top 10 offense. But they’re just not the equal of Atlanta, at least in the regular season. You can tell that the Braves agree; their offseason was built around addressing their lack of dominant postseason pitching. I also enjoy the Marlins/Mets face-off in the middle of the division; we think both teams will get to .500-ish records in extremely different ways.

What will the playoff field look like? 

Using the FanGraphs odds, the postseason field would look like this: 

National League		American League
Braves	East	Yankees
Cardinals	Central	Twins
Dodgers	West	Astros
Phillies	Wild Card 1	Mariners
Diamondbacks	Wild Card 2	Rays
Padres	Wild Card 3	Orioles

How do they get these odds?

The way FanGraphs builds these odds is to take their individual player projections, increase or decrease at-bats to match their playing time estimations, and then use that to create run scoring and run prevention estimates. Using those run figures, FanGraphs then simulates the entire season 20,000 times, with the odds being derived from the number of times each thing happens in those simulations. 

So, Atlanta won the World Series, in essence, just under 5,000 times out of their 20,000 season simulations. 

Let's hope real life is similar to how they programmed it. 

Braves now project to have best 2024 rotation in MLB

Important Braves Today Offseason Stories
2023 MLB Free Agent Rankings
Current Atlanta Braves prospect rankings
Current Atlanta Braves 40-man roster
2024 International Free Agency tracker

Check out Braves Today on Socials!
Follow Braves Today on Twitter!
Like Braves Today on Facebook!
Check out the homepage for more Atlanta Braves News!
Subscribe to Braves Today on YouTube!
Get Exclusive Braves Merchandise