Braves will miss playoffs for first time since 2017 and have big decisions to make this winter.
Longtime manager Brian Snitker could choose to step aside.
Retaining its core, Atlanta expects to get right back to competing next year.
WASHINGTON — These Atlanta Braves find themselves wedged in an unusual spot, accustomed to living by one of baseball’s truisms yet also refusing to accept that this season was nothing more than a worst-case simulation.
So yes, it’s undeniable that you are what your record says you are and right now, the Braves are 68-83.
At the same time, there’s justification for the Braves to regard their injury-ravaged roster, the long-term mojo disruption of a March PED suspension and a rash of one-run games that went the wrong way and think, well, this is not who we are.
Unfortunately for them, they’ll have to wait until 2026 to prove that.
“We’re expected to win every year,” outfielder Michael Harris II tells USA TODAY Sports. “I think we know as a team that this year isn’t a teller of who we are or who we’ll be in the future. It’s really just coming back next year, having a plan in spring training and sticking with it. Being one throughout the whole season.
“It wasn’t a normal season. Kind of started bad for us from the jump and we never quite got back right. Just kept going downhill from there. Hopefully we can change that over the offseason.”
That will come far quicker than Braves Country ever imagined.
Atlanta will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2017, Brian Snitker’s first full season as manager. Since 2018, it’s been full-throated October madness in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and a surprise World Series title in 2021, when franchise player Ronald Acuña Jr. tore up his knee (the first time) and a cadre of replacements backfilled around Freddie Freeman and Max Fried and won it all.
The Braves in winters past adequately replaced Freeman and shortstop Dansby Swanson and then hardly resisted when staff ace Fried left in December for a $218 million contract with the New York Yankees. Hey, they survived greater defections.
Yet as Harris noted, the 2025 vibes were cursed almost from the jump.
Jurickson Profar, signed to a three-year, $42 million contract to play left field, was suspended 80 games for a PED violation four games into the season. Right-hander Reynaldo López was lost to season-ending shoulder surgery after one start, kicking off a season of pitching calamities that saw Chris Sale, Spencer Schwellenbach, A.J. Smith-Shawver and Grant Holmes miss significant swaths of time.
“Obviously, injuries weren’t good to us this year,” says All-Star first baseman Matt Olson, who lost a significant amount of lineup protection when third baseman Austin Riley was limited to 102 games before his season ended Aug. 2. “At one point we had our whole starting rotation from Opening Day out.
“Not something you can immediately control, but it’s on everyone’s mind that we want to come out and have a good, healthy year.”
Was this season just a blip? And will club president Alex Anthopoulos and the corporate entity controlling the purse strings treat it as such?
Either way, there’s plenty of outstanding questions regarding the Braves’ composition in 2026.
Hazy shade of winter
Even with Riley out, and a desiccated starting rotation, the Braves still roll out a reputable alignment most nights. Their Sept. 1 waiver claim of shortstop Ha-Seong Kim from the Tampa Bay Rays shored up a position of glaring need since the offensive demise of Orlando Arcia resulted in his May release.
Kim and three-time All-Star Ozzie Albies create a solid look up the middle – for now.
Kim has a $16 million player option for 2026, and with every smooth movement afield and hard-hit ball – he has a .304/.365/.391 slash line in 13 games with Atlanta – the chances increase he turns it down and hits the free agent market again.
Albies has a $7 million club option for 2026, and his $4 million buyout enhances the chances it’s picked up – as does his .400 average against left-handers since July 29. There’s also a reasonable $18 million option on 2024 Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale.
Yet beyond closer Raisel Iglesias and DH Marcell Ozuna, the biggest pending free agent is in the manager’s office.
Snitker, 69, is in the final year of his contract in this, his 49th year in the Braves organization. Both he and Anthopoulos have kept the door ajar on a 2026 return, even as shifting into an advisory role for his golden anniversary as a Brave seems logical.
“Snit’s been in the game for a long time. He’s been here a long time,” says Olson. “Won a World Series, knows how to do it. Learned from one of the best in Bobby Cox. He’s just always even-keeled, no matter how we’re playing.
“I think that’s a good trait to have.”
The Braves are 22-21 since Aug. 1, 9-18 against currently-aligned playoff clubs in that span. For his part, Snitker appreciates his team’s effort and intensity even in the absence of playoff stakes, an odd position for this franchise.
“We’ve been out of it for a while. We dug a huge hole for ourselves,” says Snitker, whose club was 42-53 and 12th among NL teams by the All-Star break. “We had some help, with all the injuries and everything. But you’d never know it with these guys. They’re going out there like we’re fighting to win the division again.
“They’re a bunch of pros and they love to play baseball and it’s good to see there’s nobody feeling sorry. Just trying to go out and win the game.”
And the misfortune has created an onramp for others to shine.
‘I want to earn it’
Hurston Waldrep winces thinking about the convergence of injuries that felled the pitchers above him in the Braves organization.
He considers it a relief that ultimately, the impetus for his recall to the big leagues was a literal act of nature – the rainstorm that postponed the MLB Speedway Classic, prompting Atlanta to call him up for the game restart Aug. 3.
And Waldrep may never go back to the minors.
Waldrep posted a 1.01 ERA over 35 ⅔ innings in August, a stretch beginning with his Speedway Classic relief heroics and continuing through a stretch of one earned run yielded over 18 1/3 innings of three starts.
Sale, Schwellenbach and Spencer Strider would be rotation locks in 2026, with Lopez another possibility should he finish his recovery. Waldrep would like to join them – the right way.
“I want to earn my spot,” says Waldrep, chosen 24th overall out of Florida in 2023. “The way everything’s gone this year and the way these (injured) guys have handled it, it’s been awesome to see them back home in Atlanta, working to be back.
“The way my opportunity came about, having the rainout – that’s how I got here. Thank the good Lord above for sending us some rain and giving me an opportunity. It is what it is – you take ‘em where you get ‘em and keep going.”
Waldrep was roughed up in two big league starts in 2024, which he used as fuel down in Class AAA Gwinnett. As the bold-faced names kept landing on the injured list, his return became more imminent.
“It was a great year and I learned a lot and wouldn’t change a thing about it,” says Waldrep, who has a 2.78 ERA, 1.16 WHIP and a 4-1 record in 45 ⅓ innings this season. “I really enjoyed spending the first part of the year in Triple-A and beating the odds of people telling me I wouldn’t be back, stuff like that. Having a chip on my shoulder.
“I didn’t accept failure and learned from it and continued to grow.”
Waldrep is one of 16 starting pitchers that rookie catcher Drake Baldwin has had to handle. Baldwin has guided all of them with aplomb, and added 16 homers and a .766 OPS – the opportunity arising with catcher Sean Murphy’s rib cage fracture and season-ending hip surgery limiting him to 94 games.
“His game-calling and handling the pitching staff has been awesome,” says Snitker of Baldwin. “Very worthy of a Rookie of the Year nod, in my opinion.”
The breakouts and the projected returnees create a sense that the Braves could once again look pretty daunting when they reassemble in North Point for Grapefruit League play in February. The onus will first be on the franchise to commit; the players, it seems are ready to run through a wall to run it back.
Waldrep has been around the organization enough to know what the good times look like, how the mood is in those times, and how the vibes might differ in this aggravating season. The Braves’ 34 one-run losses lead the major leagues, the cherry on top of their season-long sundae of misfortune.
It still hasn’t crushed the vibes, or the notion that this season of misfortune is the aberration. Not the rule.
“The clubhouse overall, doesn’t ever feel like what’s happened this year,” says Waldrep. “It’s still an awesome environment to be around, a winning environment to be around. You’re around a bunch of people who want to win, who are striving to win, who are working very hard to be the best versions of themselves.
“That makes everyone here really excited for next year but also, we have a job to finish this year. We have to end the year on a good note, make a statement and reassure ourselves we’re still a really good organization, a winning program, and this doesn’t change at all who we are.”
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
