Reason for optimism: This was an exciting and proficient team the last third of the season.
Reason for pessimism: Upside is relative, and this is still a team using veteran placeholders to keep a product on the field.
I went 16-5 on my MLB over/under win totals last year, and I deserved every one of the five losses. While a handful of the 16 wins needed to be nursed to the finish line, in general, they all had positive expected value for the majority of the season -- except one.
In "bad beat" fashion that would qualify for a segment on Scott Van Pelt's SportsCenter, under bettors watched the Atlanta Braves go 12-2 in their last 14 games to clinch the "over" 67.5 total wins on the last day of the season. That included the gift, for under bettors, of a canceled game during the stretch run.
One hundred games into the season, Atlanta was on pace to win 55 games. The Braves then went 34-27 the rest of the way, tied for third-best in the National League, en route to winning as many games in their last 61 as they did in their first 100.
If this were the NFL and a team finished like that over its last six games, everyone would be pegging them as a sleeper team the next year, and there would be reader demand for a 3,000-word, Bill Barnwell think piece. Does that make the Braves a sexy pick to continue last year's momentum and surprise this year?
The answer, I think, is going to surprise you.
To start, in terms of cluster luck, Atlanta was the unluckiest team in baseball last season, with unfortunate sequencing costing the Braves 60 net runs, the most in baseball. That equates to hidden improvement of six wins this year, even if they perform at the same level as last year.
That wouldn't seem to be the outlook, however, because they also check a key box for improvement: "Low-Hanging Fruit Removal." Atlanta got below-replacement-player contributions on offense from 10 players totaling a Major League worst -5.0 WAR. The players making up that deficit accounted for 1,280 plate appearances. Performance that bad usually doesn't repeat year-over-year because a regularly playing major leaguer shouldn't be below-replacement-level skill-wise, and positive regression will take its course next year -- or the player really is that bad, and his team will release him. The latter is the more secure form of improvement, and the Braves have employed it. Of those 10 players who posted a negative WAR at the plate, nine have been purged from the team, leaving only Emilio Bonifacio battling this spring for a roster spot that is certainly not guaranteed.
The story is similarly encouraging on the mound. Atlanta had the 28th-ranked rotation in terms of ERA, and a large reason for that was the number of turns taken by spot starters. The Braves used 16 starting pitchers last year, and 11 of them had ERAs above 5.00. Atlanta kept two of the youngest and most effective, Julio Teheran (26 years old, 3.21 ERA) and Mike Foltynewicz (25, 4.31 ERA) and rounded out the staff with veteran but extremely durable, inning-eating arms in R.A. Dickey (average of 32.5 starts the past six seasons), Bartolo Colon (31.25 starts the past four seasons) and Jaime Garcia (30 starts last season). If the Braves get 150 starts out of that rotation, the improvement in runs allowed will be massive, even if the newcomers post mid-4.00 ERAs. That unleashes a huge amount of improvement in 2017, just from the subtraction of last season's worst performers.
Professional thieves, especially those in the arts, face a dilemma: Should they successfully steal a prized work, for obvious reasons, they can never display it. So how to explain Atlanta's blatantly flaunting their possession of shortstop Dansby Swanson?
Positively stolen from Arizona during the 2015 offseason, the then 22-year old wasted no time showing that he was major-league-ready, hitting .302/.361/.442 in his 38-game audition toward the end of the past season. His arrival, and that of trade-deadline pickup Matt Kemp, coincided with the late-season turnaround, but their presence wasn't coincidental.
Brandon Phillips provides another veteran to join 2016 breakout star this season, along with franchise cornerstone Freddie Freeman and vastly underrated Ender Inciarte, who also came over in the Dansby heist. That's like stealing a valuable piece of art and getting to keep the Tesla it was taken from.
The bullpen was serviceable last season, and though I'm not wild about the skills of the collective relievers, especially the setup men, I suppose serviceable is a reasonable projection for this year as well. The same can be said about the defense. Being roughly league average, as the defense was last season, won't make things any tougher on the staff.
A sub-average bullpen is not really a problem because this team isn't built to challenge for the postseason, and that distinguishes it from the profile of the team that annually makes up my favorite "over" call in its respective league. In winning 68 games last season, as unlikely as their finish might have appeared, Atlanta played to the level of a 74-win team, and the Braves are poised in 2017 to make big advances in reducing runs allowed and increasing runs scored.
Anything over .500 is probably out of the question, but if they keep their run differential near zero all season, as I suspect they will, this is a very strong over play that I'm genuinely excited about because the Braves' opening market of 75.5 actually dropped a full game shortly after release. Wherever the market settles, this is my favorite over in the National League.
2017 projection: 79-83 (tied for third, NL East)
Bet recommendation: Over