Reason for optimism: Bullpen woes are the easiest to correct from one year to the next.
Reason for pessimism: They're not even trying this year.
Across each division in the National League, the race for last place is at least as competitive as the race for first. For the purposes of anything other than draft order, it's a largely meaningless race for the baseball industry. But the money for nailing an over or under on the dregs of the league is just as green as cashing an over ticket on a division winner. In the NL East, oddsmakers have essentially said "pick your poison" when it comes to evaluating the outlook for the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies.
Unlike most of the teams that are getting worse, the Braves have an obvious area of improvement, which would almost be impossible not to employ: Atlanta pulled off the fairly uncommon distinction in 2015 of having a bullpen with a substantially higher ERA than its rotation. The knee-jerk reaction is that transferring closing duties from Craig Kimbrel to Jason Grilli and Jim Johnson is the perfect formula to pull off that trick. Logically, that is airtight, but Johnson and Grilli actually had a 2.53 ERA over 81.7 innings -- an ERA lower than Kimbrel had in San Diego. Take that, logic! It was the rest of the bullpen that produced a result so astounding it needs to lead off a paragraph.
The Braves used a mind-blowing total of 33 different relievers last year, and outside of their two closers, the other 31 had a combined ERA of 5.12. It would seem utterly impossible for 31 different major league pitchers to produce well below replacement-level results over 404 innings. And this wasn't a case of overuse, either; collectively, the Braves bullpen was 21st in innings pitched.
If Atlanta can find relievers to lower its ERA a full point -- to 4.12 over those 400 innings -- the team will still have the worst bullpen in the National League (excluding Colorado and those aggravating park effects), yet the Braves will also give up 45 fewer runs and win five more games. And I repeat for emphasis, they'd still have the worst bullpen in the National League. There probably isn't lower-hanging fruit in the entire league this ripe for improvement.
That turns last year's 67-win team to a 72-win unit pretty easily, before we look at changes in the rotation and the lineup.
The Braves traded their best starter last year, Shelby Miller, to the Diamondbacks for an impressive set of prospects, including last year's No. 1 pick in the draft, Dansby Swanson. As great as that is for future Cobb County versions of the team, it leaves the Braves with a marginal loss this year, though not as much as you might think. Miller had an eye-catching 3.03 ERA in 2015, but those were just earned runs; and while he was on the mound, opponents scored a lot more unearned runs than league average. Miller's RA was 3.59, a much less impressive number. (For comparison, Carlos Martinez had a 3.01 ERA and a 3.26 RA.)
There will be drop-off from Miller, but the Braves are also replacing Alex Wood and Williams Perez, who made a combined 40 starts of over-4.00 ERA quality. The replacements are Manny Banuelos, Mike Foltynewicz and Bud Norris. No one in that group -- or in the entire rotation, for that matter -- is ever going to win any hardware. And while they may go undrafted in many fantasy leagues, they don't have to do much to equal the collective output of last year's starters.
On offense, the Braves were the lowest-scoring team in baseball last year -- by 40 runs -- so it's hard to get materially worse. Helping is the fact that of the seven position players who contributed negative fWAR last season, the only one to return is Hector Olivera (who barely registered negative at -0.1). In constructing the 2016 lineup, the Braves took a different approach than the Phillies. Rather than turning nearly the entire lineup over to youngsters, the Braves only have three under-30 starters -- Freddie Freeman, Jace Peterson and Ender Inciarte -- who might be part of the team after they move to a new stadium. The approach might not lead to a better team in 2017 or 2018, but this year it may lead to somewhat more consistent run production.
Let me be clear: This is not a good team, by any means, and it's somewhat shocking given that the Braves won 96 games and the NL East in 2013 with an under-27 age lineup. My guess is this team is better than the Phillies, and of the six National League teams tanking or in teardown mode, Atlanta might have the best chance at cashing an "over" bet, mainly due to the horrific bullpen performance last year that made the team look worse than it was.
At 65.5, it's just low enough for me to take a flier and make this an "over" play.
2016 projection: 69-93 (fourth, NL East)
Bet recommendation: Over