What Atlanta Braves fans think of the team as we start 2019
We took a snapshot of your optimism or pessimism in our annual Atlanta Braves survey. It’s time to see what you thought.
We had an excellent turnout for our Atlanta Braves fan survey from a couple of weeks ago… to all who participated: “thank you”. Now that we’re here at a point less than 16 hours from the season opener at Philadelphia, let’s review the answers to these questions.
As a refresher, we gave you a series of 15 questions: 5 each from team, hitting, and pitching categories and (generally) asked if you were bullish or bearish on these topics involving the Braves.
At the end of the season, we’ll tally up the right and wrong answers and see who gets the title of Prognosticator In Chief for 2019.
With that as the introduction… here we go:
The Team Questions
T1: How many games will the Atlanta Braves win in the 2019 regular season?
- 85 or fewer (26.5%)
- 86 or more (73.5%) OPTIMISM
Atlanta managed to record 90 wins in a surprising 2018 season, but that happened against a generally weak-performing NL East. Clearly, though, everyone got better for this season… excepting the Marlins.
Y’all don’t care. You picked the Braves to stay strong, beating back the naysayers, the oddsmakers, and the division.
Even if the number ends up being just 86… that might very well be good enough.
T2: How many players will the Atlanta Braves have on their 25 man roster on August 1st that were not in the entire organization on April 1st?
- 1 or fewer (24%)
- 2 or more (76%) OPTIMISM
I’m going to characterize this as an Optimistic response simply because the acquisition of new players generally means ‘upgrades’ (or at least an attempt at an upgrade).
We know how difficult it has been to get this team to make moves all Winter, now we’ll all see together how that works out before the (real) deadline of July 31… yes, that’s a new change for 2019.
T3: How will the Atlanta Braves finish in the NL East division this year?
- 1st or 2nd place (75.9%) OPTIMISM
- 3rd or lower (24.1%)
In keeping with the answer to T1 above, if they win, they will probably do well in the division also, and virtually the same group believes that the win total should translate well.
This isn’t a lock, of course, for there are scenarios in which all 4 of the better teams in the NL East could reasonably finish in any of the first 4 positions.
But we fans aren’t having any of that.
T4: The best finish in the National League MVP voting for a Braves player will be…
- 4th place or better (83.6%) OPTIMISM
- 5th place or worse (16.4%)
Accordingly, if the team does well, there is probably a reason… somebody is having a great year.
In retrospect, I should have made this ‘3rd place or better’ just to make everyone think about it for a moment of two longer. Nonetheless, it seems that a super-majority believes that at least one of the trio of Acuna/Freeman/Donaldson (probably those names) will get strong consideration this November.
I like it.
T5: In 2018, the Braves were 12th in average announced home attendance (31,552 by ESPN’s chart). In 2019, the average will be…
- lower than [last year’s] 31,552 (27.8%)
- higher than 31,552 (72.2%) OPTIMISM
Boom! You’re gonna go to more games this year! That kind of enthusiasm can only help this team, too.
(Technical clarification: if somehow the average hits 31,552 exactly, I’ll rule this for the ‘lower’ side… the idea behind this question was whether we’d see an increase in attendance.)