The Atlanta Braves could use a complete review of their less-than-stellar April.
As the calendar flips to May, the Atlanta Braves podcast looks at the things that went right — and wrong — during the season’s first month while looking forward to the beginning of another new season entirely.
When the season began, we looked at the Braves’ schedule and figured there was a clear path ahead to a great start that would vault this club into first place with a safe early lead in the NL East.
Not only did that not happen, but now Atlanta is mired in a 12-14 funk that finds them squarely in the middle of the pack after dropping 2 more games to finish April.
It could be worse, no doubt: injuries have no taken out a third centerfielder, even as three pitchers are in the process of returning from their own injuries.
At one point, roughly one-third of the 26-man roster was on the IL, though admittedly injuries to the most vital offensive contributors have been limited.
There have been silver linings: Huascar Ynoa and the play from the Braves bench players are those highlights.
But the flip side (Drew Smyly, the production from the lineups lower half) has overcome much of the reason to smile.
Indeed, we might be celebrating a huge month from Ronald Acuna Jr., except that his own injury cooled him off and exposed the rest of a lackluster offense.
But there are ways to improve, and we’ve got at least one idea about that… one that the Braves should “promote”.
The Atlanta Braves prospects get ready to begin
There is one universal bright spot, though: the return of minor league baseball this coming week. Something we haven’t seen in nearly 20 months.
All of these topics are covered in this week’s podcast: get your copy downloaded from here, click the player below, or grab it from your favorite subscription service… any way you’d prefer to do that is perfectly fine by us.
Hey, we promise this isn’t all doom and gloom like the above seems to indicate, because we do still love our Braves baseball and are hoping for better things as injured players come back.
So let’s all together look toward a brighter May outlook… and root for our team to find their groove!