6 Reasons that Braves Fans should be thankful

6 Braves Reasons to Be Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving Braves country! Hope your day is filled with too much turkey, gravy, stuffing, and crispy fried onions that you’ve picked off the green bean casserole. While you wait as that “3 p.m. lunch” turns into a 5 p.m. dinner, here are six things Atlanta Braves fans are thankful for:

6 long-term contracts

There are few teams, if any, in professional sports that have invested as much in their young core as the Atlanta Braves. Thanks to a shrewd GM, an ownership willing to spend, and players willing to buy in, the Braves have six young stars under contract until at least 2027. Ronald Acuña Jr, Ozzie Albies, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Michael Harris, and Spencer Strider are locked into team-friendly deals that give the team financial flexibility elsewhere. I don’t know how AA does it.

5 straight division titles

Braves fans might not realize this, thanks to the 14-straight division titles from 1991-2005, but division titles are hard to come by for most teams. In fact, the Braves 22 total division titles are a major league record.

Still, just because a team did something in the 90s or early 2000s doesn’t mean fans should be thankful for that right now. After all, I don’t think Oakland Athletics fans are all that grateful about their nine World Series championships, the last of which came in 1989, when the team is on the brink of being moved.

For the Braves to win five-straight division titles is really a testament to the players they bring in, the coaching staff, and a front office that somehow knows that you can call up a 21-year-old kid from AA and he can win the Rookie of the Year.

4 incredible rookie seasons

Coming into the 2022 season, MLB Pipeline had the defending champs ranking as the third-worst farm system in baseball. This wasn’t surprising, as the Braves had graduated their once top-tier farm system which included Ronald Acuña Jr, Dansby Swanson, Max Fried, Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, AJ Minter, and Ian Anderson.

Pipeline only listed one player on their Top 100, so naturally, the Braves had the top two rookies in the National League this season and four incredible seasons by rookies.

Spencer Strider and NL Rookie of the Year winner, Michael Harris II, combined for 9.7 fWAR. This is absurd because Harris didn’t play a game in the majors until May 28, and Strider was used exclusively in relief until May 30.

But these two weren’t the only outstanding Braves rookies. Dylan Lee came out of nowhere as a dependable reliever, finishing with a 2.13 ERA and the third-highest fWAR among Braves relievers at 1.1, despite also not making his season debut until late May.

After losing Ozzie Albies and Orlando Arcia to injury, the Braves went bold, calling up Vaughn Grissom from AA. Grissom put up 0.7 fWAR in just 41 games and had a solid 121 wRC+. While he faded toward the end of the season, Grissom’s ability to not only keep the position afloat while both Albies and Arcia were out but keep it productive helped the team to their fifth-straight division title.

As a team, the Braves were first in rookie fWAR by hitters, at 5.7, and first in rookie fWAR by pitchers, at 6.7. Not bad for the 27th-best farm system in baseball.

3 stud starting pitchers

Going into the 2023 season, the Braves have not one, not two, but three pitchers who could be Cy Young candidates. This past season, the team’s top three starters, Max Fried, Spencer Strider, and Kyle Wright combined for 12.8 fWAR and a 2.79 ERA in 497.1 innings.

Among major league starting trios, this bunch had the fourth-highest fWAR at 12.8, behind just the Giants (14.1), the Astros (13.9), and the Blue Jays (12.9). This combined fWAR than the Phillies (12.7), who had both Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, who combined for 10.4 fWAR.

Good starting pitching is a luxury, and the Braves having three stud starters is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

2 incredible catchers

Good catching is hard to come by. In 2022, the average catcher hit .226/.295/.367, good for an 89 wRC+. This was, more or less, Gary Sanchez. If your team had a Gary Sanchez, you were doing okay.

But the Braves didn’t have a Gary Sanchez on their team. They had Travis d’Arnaud, the sixth-best catcher by fWAR in all of baseball. d’Arnaud’s 3.9 fWAR wasn’t all from defense either, as he had a 120 wRC+, 31% better than the league-average catcher.

Of course, d’Arnaud only played 107 of the 162 games. Of the top six catchers, d’Arnaud played the fewest games. Surely the Braves didn’t have a backup catcher who was a better hitter than their primary catcher, right?

Somehow, they did. William Contreras not only hit 20 homers in 376 PAs, he also walked 10.4% of the time. This walk rate put him in the 77th percentile in baseball this season. On the season, Conteras had a 138 wRC+ and a 2.4 fWAR.

Combined, the Braves catching core put up 6.4 fWAR, third-highest in the majors, behind a Blue Jays’ trio of Alejandro Kirk, Danny Jansen, and Gabriel Moreno and the unit named J.T. Realmuto.

Conteras and d’Arnaud were both All-Stars, as well, and was the first time a team had two All-Star catchers in the same season. Having one good catcher is a luxury, having two incredible catchers is almost gluttony.

1 team committed to winning

The rebuild feels like forever ago, doesn’t it? The 2021 World Series was evidence that those three miserable seasons were worth it, but the Braves have shown they aren’t satisfied with just one championship. Terry McGuirk recently stated that the team intends to have a top-five payroll in the next few years and AA has vigilance to extend the team’s top young players proves Atlanta’s commitment to winning. This one team’s commitment to winning is just one of many Braves reasons to be thankful for.