I'm glad to see Atlanta doing so well right now, but before any of us get our hopes up for a playoff run, consider that Atlanta has played 24 games since the All-Star break and only 7 of those have been against teams with winning records. Their record over those seven games is 3-4 and one of those wins only came because Washington's bullpen absolutely gagged away a 9 run lead. They've only got 5 series left in the season against winning teams. Of their final 52 games, 25 of them come against such teams as the Padres, the Marlins, the Phillies and the Rockies who are all among the worst teams in baseball. The final series of the season is against Pittsburgh and assuming Pittsburgh doesn't fall apart in August and September, in all likelihood, this series will determine whether Atlanta or Pittsburgh gets the 2nd NL Wild Card spot. I believe that by this point, it will be a question as to whether Atlanta or Pittsburgh plays against St. Louis in the play-in game.
I really don't expect Atlanta to continue their pace because let's face it, they're the Braves. This team has one of the most dubious histories of late season/postseason collapses in American sports history. If Atlanta does actually make the playoffs, their record is going to be inflated (i.e. their record is going to indicate that they're a better team than they actually are) due to the previously mentioned lack of true quality teams they're playing in the final 2 months of the season. I personally am of the opinion that in their final 52 games, they will likely win somewhere between 19-24 of these 52 games. However, if Atlanta does actually make the postseason, the ceiling for them is the NLDS. They might win the Wild Card play-in game and get into the NLDS, but the honest truth is they are simply not good enough to beat teams like Washington, Cincinnati, Los Angeles or San Francisco depending on which of those last 2 teams wins the NL West in a best of 5 series. I don't think Atlanta is a bad team. I think they're a mid-pack team in that I think if you ranked all 30 teams in terms of how good they are, Atlanta would likely be somewhere between 11-15.
What really concerns me about them is that this year is the best they're gonna be for a long time to come. With the exception perhaps of Brian McCann, every major player this team has is gonna be leaving within the next 5 years because Atlanta's ownership (Liberty Media Group) basically refuses to pay their players enough to stay. The only reason McCann is probably gonna still be around is because Chipper Jones is retiring and management needs a new face for the franchise in the post-Chipper Jones era and Brian McCann is the most logical pick for this role. For the record, Liberty Media has the money to pay their players. Atlanta is currently somewhere between 12-15th in terms of the team's payroll and honestly, they should be in the top 5. The Braves case really is one in which it's not that a team doesn't have the resources to pay their players, but that the team will not use its resources to pay their players.
Remember these names because they will be superstars for the next decade plus and all of them will have passed and slipped through the Braves fingertips due to stingy ownership:
Michael Bourn, Martin Prado, Craig Kimbrel, Tommy Hanson, Johnny Venters, Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, Mike Minor, Brandon Beachy.
