⚾ Baseball Bytes: Did the Braves Miss Their Shot at a Dynasty?

Atlanta mastered modern team-building — but their golden era may be depreciating. Plus, Roman Anthony and how quickly top prospects get a hit.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes^¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ Brave New World?

Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Atlanta Braves on deck before the start of the game against the Milwaukee Brewers on June 9, 2025 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (John Fisher/Getty Images)

Time can really fly by sometimes.

I distinctly remember putting out this story about the young 2018 Atlanta Braves for FiveThirtyEight and then running off to Citi Field to see the team in early-season action against the New York Mets, who were still trying to recover the vestigial promise of their own 2015 World Series run against an up-and-coming new version of an old division rival. The Braves dominated, crushing the Mets 11-0 for the 19th of what would end up being a NL East-high 90 wins. Ronald Acuña Jr. blasted a ball off of Jason Vargas that I think still travels around in low earth orbit.

In the years since, the Braves built a seven-year playoff streak, won the fourth-most games in MLB, won a World Series that was both surprising and not, and generally established themselves as a perennial title contender in the same mold as the ‘90s-era Braves dynasty whose shoes they were trying to fill.

But this year, Atlanta is tracking for just 78.1 wins (according to my Elo simulations)² with only a 9 percent chance to make the playoffs, marking the first real crack in that era. While at various times it seemed like they would climb out of the early hole they dug for themselves, particularly with Acuña back in the lineup, the Braves have gone on another recent losing skid to fall 10 games below .500, nearing the point from which no team has ever recovered to win a World Series:

The recent Braves had all the ingredients to become the game’s next great dynasty. But is it possible their window is already closing — with just the one, incredibly strange title to show for it?