Significantly more challenge to Braves due to Ronald Acuña’s season-ending injury

Ronald Acuña’s season-ending injury has made the Braves’ path to October significantly more challenging.

The Phillies are on fire, and the Braves have already lost two of their top players for the season. This will not be an easy path to the postseason for Atlanta.

Let’s start with some basic statistics from 2023: Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley played 159 games for the Atlanta Braves, Ozzie Albies played 148 games, Sean Murphy played 108 games, and Spencer Strider led Braves pitchers with 186.2 innings pitched. The Braves were a dominant and healthy team last season.

However, this season has been challenging for Atlanta. Sean Murphy began the season with an oblique injury, missing nearly the first two months. Ozzie Albies fractured his toe and went on the IL. Spencer Strider pitched only nine innings before suffering a season-ending elbow injury. Now, Ronald Acuña Jr. is out for the season with a torn ACL in his left knee, three years after tearing the ACL in his right knee.

The Braves have been hit hard by injuries this season. The hope is that this is the worst it will get. Despite the setbacks, the Braves are still in a strong position. As of Memorial Day, FanGraphs gives the Braves a 97 percent chance of making the postseason and the third-best odds (11.5 percent) of winning the World Series, behind the Dodgers and Yankees.

That said, the Braves’ path to October has become more complicated. They are unlikely to reach 100 wins and are no longer clear favorites to win their division. The Phillies have had an incredible start, and FanGraphs currently gives Philadelphia a 60 percent chance to win the division, compared to the Braves’ 40 percent. It’s shaping up to be a competitive race.

Despite losing Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr., the Braves remain a strong team with postseason aspirations. Losing their best pitcher and best player is frustrating, but their pitching staff still boasts the fifth-best ERA- (83) and fifth-best FIP- (93) in baseball. While the lineup has been inconsistent, the team remains comfortably in the top 10 for team wRC+ (109).

It also helps that the schedule should become easier for the Braves. There has been much discussion about Philadelphia’s favorable schedule in the first couple of months. While the Braves haven’t faced an extremely tough schedule, they have a good number of easier opponents remaining. As of Memorial Day, the Braves have the eleventh-easiest schedule left, including 20 games against teams like the White Sox, Marlins, Angels, and A’s. They also have 10 more games against the Phillies, with whom they haven’t matched up since the Braves took two out of three in Philadelphia to start the season.

Those 30 games could be crucial in determining the division winner, and so far, the Phillies have excelled against weaker teams. The Braves will need to match the Phillies’ performance against these lesser teams or continue to be a significant obstacle for Philadelphia in their head-to-head matchups. Both tasks are challenging for Atlanta, especially without Strider and Acuña for the remainder of the season. It’s clear why the Phillies are now favored, as the Braves face a daunting task to secure their seventh straight divisional title.

However, if any team relishes a regular-season challenge, it’s the Braves. They won the World Series in 2021 with just 88 wins after Acuña tore his ACL mid-season. In 2022, they overcame a 10.5-game deficit to the Mets to win the last great divisional pennant chase of the previous postseason format and won 104 games in 2023 with only three reliable starting pitchers for most of the season. Despite their postseason struggles against the Phillies in the past two seasons, the Braves have demonstrated a remarkable ability to win during the regular season, regardless of the obstacles.

The injuries in 2024 present a significant challenge for the Braves, but they have the talent to overcome these setbacks and remain a postseason contender. Whether they will be NL East champions again or a Wild Card team for the first time in a while is uncertain. What is clear is that this season won’t be smooth sailing for Atlanta. Most importantly, there’s hope that Ronald Acuña Jr. will make a successful recovery from knee surgery. Having done it before, both the Braves and the baseball world are hopeful that one of the game’s biggest stars can return to form in the future.