The Braves’ nightmarish start to the season has gotten even worse
The Phillies are 3-1, but if you’re the type of fan who must always seek out the negatives, there have been things to not like. Trea Turner and J.T. Realmuto have been banged up, if minor. Ranger Suárez is on the shelf. They haven’t hit starters well. The one loss, I guess.
No one in Atlanta wants to hear it.
The Braves’ train wreck of an opening week got even worse on Monday when Jurickson Profar was suspended for 80 games because of a positive PED test. It came just four days into his Braves tenure, right on the heels of a three-year, $42 million free-agent contract this offseason.
Minutes later, the Braves placed Reynaldo López, their No. 2 starter to open the season, who pitched to a 1.99 ERA last year, on the 15-day injured list.
A few hours after that, they lost to the Dodgers to fall to 0-5.
The season opened with what many saw as a tight three-team race between the Phillies, Braves and Mets, with perhaps Philadelphia and Atlanta as the top favorites, if you had to pick two. The first not-even-week of the season certainly doesn’t change that — the Braves are not out of it — but it’s hard to script a worse start.
Things will get better for them, you’d think. Spencer Strider is supposed to return in mid-April; Ronald Acuña Jr. is expected back in mid-to-late May. They’ll win a game, eventually — if not over the next two days in Los Angeles, then probably at home this weekend against the Marlins.
They say you can’t win a division in the first month of the season — but that you can lose one. There’s a case to be made that three of the five best teams in baseball are in the NL East, and a dreadful March/April can be tough to come back from in such a field. The Braves aren’t quite at that point yet; today is April 1.
Despite a 3 1/2 game deficit, they’re still, according to FanGraphs, the favorite to win the division, at 39.3%. But on Opening Day, that was 64.2%. No one’s odds have slid further. No one is close.