From 0-7 to October? Understand the 2025 Atlanta Warriors

Which version of the 2025 Atlanta Warriors is Real The 2025 Atlanta Warriors version?

The first few weeks of the season were a journey, similar to roller coaster rides, like the attraction of an amusement park, which more or less ended where it started.

Entering this season, the Braves are considered the biggest threat to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ supremacy in the National League. While the Dodgers (ESPN BET’s preseason/below is a 103.5 win win), the Braves (93.5) are in the next tier, leading the two division rivals for the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets.

Then Opening Day arrives, with the Braves starting in a tough seven-game game against the San Diego Padres and the Dodgers. Atlanta lost all seven games, with no score or a run in four of them.

That's not how to knock the Dodgers down the top of the mountain. Indeed, the old motto about early baseball has always been that you can’t win a championship in April, but you may lose it. Being the 30th team since 1901, starting a season with seven straight losses, the Braves are filled with some frustrating history.

Still, the Brave’s April story is defined by how they ultimately deal with the early downturn. Atlanta continued to fall into the middle of the month, but then scored nine victories in 11 games, almost upgrading the ship.

The Braves haven't reached the .500 mark this season, but it seems inevitable that they will soon–they have driven the differential out of the negative territory. All in all, Atlanta can at least exhale after the initial stutter.

To sum it up: Atlanta entered the campaign anointed as the Dodgers' prime challenger — 2025 Braves version 1. They proceeded to put up one of the 30 worst starts in 125 years — 2025 Braves version 2. And before April was over, they'd already climbed back to break-even (or thereabouts) which, in effect, resets their near-disastrous season — 2025 Braves version 3.

Three very different versions of the same team. Which leads to our initial question: Which brave ones are the real brave ones?

0-7 The brave and ugly history

As mentioned earlier, the Braves are now one of 30 teams to start a 0-7 season, and it was the fifth time the Braves appeared on the roster, joining 1919, 1980, 1980, 1988 and 2016. This links the Detroit Tigers to most series.

It was a bad start historically and extended the knee of death in the way the pennant flags competed. None of the top 29 teams on the roster made the playoffs. Indeed, only two managed to go above .500, while none of the 29 ended with a positive difference.

So if the Braves will quickly climb to .500 and keep the black difference, they will have already subverted all the other teams on the 0-7 list. This is indeed no surprise, because the Warriors are much better than the other 29 teams in 2025.

In my historical database, among the various team measures I have, there are three years of power levels to determine strong (or less powerful) teams in the multi-season window. If we make Atlanta’s season open/below champions as their 2025-level agent, we can estimate their three-year power rating of 95.6 (or 95.6 wins per 162 games).

Of the other 29 teams on the 0-7 list, only two teams had a power of 81 or higher – the Boston Red Sox in 1945 and the Astros in 1983. Boston has a three-year power rating of 86.6, but this is a special case because the sudden change in baseball has been made to track players returning from military service. The 1945 Red Sox didn’t have Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, Bobby Doerr or Johnny Pesky. But the Red Sox in 1946 had everyone and won the pennant. A case that is completely different from the 2025 Warriors.

The 1983 Astronauts are more similar to these Braves and are one of two 0-7 starters, climbing more than .500 by the end of the season. (The other is the Braves in 1980, who scored 81-80 with 30 runs.) Houston finished the game 85-77 after his horrible start, actually approaching the season's losses nine times in a row. Astros finished three games in the red, but with a three-year power rating of 81.4, 14 wins less than the current Braves.

So of the 30 teams that started 0-7, the Braves are most likely to bounce back from such a bad start. They passed this in the second half of April.

How the offense helps their turnaround

We have noticed how poor the Brave’s offense is on the opening trip. Atlanta averaged just two runs per game and hit .151 with a score of 0.151 in the game. Braves' collective team OPS (.485) is the worst in baseball game.

It took a while, but the brave bat was already heated. Atlanta entered their series with the Dodgers, earning 4.9 runs per game (10th in Major League Baseball (MLB)) and has earned .779 OPS (5th) since the downturn. Even after last year's knee surgery, they continued to wait for Ronald Acuna Jr.'s season debut, they did.

The drivers of offensive rise are somewhat surprising. Sean Murphy has won seven home runs in 17 games since Illinois’s appearance, a season he’s won 10 seasons in 72 games. Young receiver Drake Baldwin has had an action of 1.009 since April 3, while 30-year-old Eli White has 1.012.

Those surprising outbursts, and the expected contributions of Marcell Ozuna and Austin Riley, even though Matt Olson (.767 OPS), Michael Harris II (.614) and Ozzie Albies (.664) are still looking to reach their professional level.

Despite this, the problem remains

The Braves' pitching remains around the league average throughout the season. So far, last season's NL Cy Young champion Chris Sale has been inconsistent, with Spencer Schwellenbach being the only rotation member to produce at league average or higher.

Sales should be good, but the Braves are very much in need of their two big threes as it looks like they lack high-quality spin depth. In other words, Spencer Strider had only one start in the first few weeks of the season and they needed him to be healthy and stay that way. Strider (Level 1 Hamstring Strain) is expected to return later this month.

In the bullpen, the Brave has always been like this, mainly because the star's close-range battle kept the ball in the yard. After all surrendering four long balls in 2024, Iglesias coughed up five home runs in his first 11 outings. Due to insufficient pitching performance, the brave rebound back is warmer than boiling.

However, recovery has been bound by quite strong indicators. In the last 14-9 games, Atlanta's running difference is equivalent to a 94-win team throughout the season, during which the Braves have the same expectations as preseason. Of course, the problem is that it starts from 0-7.

Another problem is that the National League is full of very good teams.

Have you heard that NL has accumulated?

The Braves sat 14-16 to 30 games. Suppose they recovered the 94-win quality they achieved during the recovery period for the remaining 132 games. It's a .580 win rate and by the end of the season, Atlanta won 90 or 91 wins.

If all teams in the NL keep their current pace (certainly unlikely), then there will be five teams with 96 wins or more wins – the Mets, Dodgers, Padres, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants.

You can see the Braves’ dilemma: There is only one playoff spot to grab. If Atlanta can reach a 90 or 91 win, that would be a mixed one, but it needs to be hoped that Philadelphia and Arizona Diamondbacks (88 wins at 88 wins), or that doesn't have that one of those top five that stands out.

Prediction does not rule out anything. In the Fangraphs, the Braves made the playoffs in about 70% of the simulations, as their model saw NL East contenders better than NL West's non-production contenders. The baseball prospectus won 92 games but made it to the playoffs just 54% of the time.

Ultimately, on ESPN BET, the Braves' victory rises/below is 88.5, the same as Arizona, but less than the Mets (94.5), Phillies (91.5) (91.5) and Padres (89.5). The upstart giants are 84.5.

The Braves resumed running, but those seven games and the strength at the top of the NL greatly reduced the room for mistakes.

How capable are they in May and beyond, is that enough?

Atlanta's season may depend on May, or within weeks before Strider and Acuna rejoin the team. But they got here, and the Braves are currently a middle team in the bottom line, both in the loss bar and through the running difference. If they continue to be at this level while waiting for the stars to return, then the powerful upper level of the NL may leave them.

The upcoming schedule begins with the current series against the Dodgers, which is difficult in obvious and sneaky ways.

After Los Angeles set off Sunday, the Cincinnati Reds visited more than 500, and then traveled to Atlanta to play the Pittsburgh Pirates. There are two series against the Washington Nationals, one at home and one at home, and if you still treat the Nath as push-ups, you are not attracting attention.

A return game with San Diego, a trip to Boston, a visit to the Red Sox and a key to the Phillies. This is not an easy task for any club, especially for those who lack two biggest stars.

The Braves mostly corrected the shaking ship after a startling start. Because of these seven open losses, they have always been what we think. As the season progresses, players find their level, the roster becomes healthier and that will continue to be.

The real brave ones are not teams that start 0-7. They may have been the team that has performed much better since then. Now, shaping the crowded and powerful upper tiers in the NL playoff hierarchy, they must hope that even if they maintain the expected level, it turns out that this is enough to be done on a trip in October.