Braves' midsummer collapse has been awful, but it is far from their worst one

Going into the 2024 regular season, the Atlanta Braves had high expectations. After suffering early postseason exits in the past two seasons, Atlanta felt that this season was World Series or bust. Unfortunately, it is trending toward the latter.

Instead of convincingly running away with the National League East division, the Atlanta Braves may be fighting just to make the playoffs. Thankfully they did just secure a series win in San Francisco to help their cause.

However, injuries have undoubtedly been a major factor in Atlanta’s struggles, but so has underperformance.

Matt Olson has shown improvement as of late, but for the season he has not lived up to his massive contract. Aside from Chris Sale and Reynaldo Lopez, starting pitching has been a roller coaster. Even though 2024 has been frustrating for the Braves, it could be worse (and it has been before).

Atlanta’s 2011 Collapse

Back in September of 2011, the Atlanta Braves had an 8.5-game lead in the NL East. Within a month’s time, that division lead was erased. Atlanta went an astonishingly bad 9-18 in the last month of the season, and the Philadelphia Phillies captured the division title by a significant margin.

The worst part of 2011 was the fact that the Braves missed the postseason completely because of this meltdown. Fredi Gonzalez’s squad finished with a record of 89-73 and one game behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the lone NL Wild Card spot. Had the Braves won the final game of the 2011 regular season against the Phillies, they would have at least had a chance to sneak into the postseason.

With Chipper Jones, Freddie Freeman, Martin Prado, Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, and Dan Uggla on the lineup card, it was painful to see the Braves' season end once the calendar flipped to October.

2024 has been bad, but it appears that Atlanta keeps winning just enough games to stay in the playoff mix while the Phillies and Mets are facing struggles of their own. We can only hope history doesn't repeat itself when it comes to a season collapse.

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