Philadelphia had a solid run in the NL East a few seasons back and Washington won the title in 2012, but the Atlanta Braves have pretty much owned this division since 1991 with 17 postseason appearances over the span of 23 years.<\/p>\n
They won the NL East last season with an overall record of 96-66, but lost to the Dodgers 3-1 in the NLDS. This followed a loss in the Wildcard Round in 2012 after going 94-68.<\/p>\n
All of this success simply tells me that the Braves will once again be a major factor in this season\u2019s division title race in what should be a two-team sprint with the Nationals all the way to the finish line.<\/p>\n
The Braves spent much of the offseason trying to keep last year\u2019s roster intact with a wealth of talent by working out new deals with first baseman Freddie Freeman, outfielder Jason Heyward and short stop Andrelton Simmons as well as starting pitcher Julio Teheran and closer Craig Kimbrel.<\/p>\n
They did lose catcher Brian McCann, who signed with the Yankees . Pitcher Kris Medlen was lost for the season while recovering from Tommy John surgery and pitcher Branden Beachy will also miss the regular season as well with a second scheduled Tommy John surgery in his career.<\/p>\n
This lineup has the talent to be one of the best in the National League as long as the bigger bats can live up to expectations. Atlanta is counting heavily on a better performance from Heyward in the lead-off position after missing 58 games last year due to injuries.
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\nIt will also need better consistency from Justin Upton than he showed last season. The Braves also have to hope that Uggla still has something left in the tank after watching his numbers drop off a cliff in 2013.<\/p>\n
This entire rotation has been turned upside down with the injuries to Medlen and Beachy. Mike Minor will start the regular season on the DL while recovering from minor surgery and the Braves decided to part ways with Freddy Garcia despite the shortage of solid arms.<\/p>\n
This could end being a major stumbling block to a return to the top of the NL East, especially if Minor struggles upon his return in early May.<\/p>\n
This unit could come under major fire early in the season if Atlanta\u2019s starting rotation decided to implode. With so many question marks throughout the entire pitching staff, this area could suddenly become a major team weakness as opposed to the team strength it was last season with an ERA of 3.18 that was tops in the NL<\/p>\n
Even if the Braves\u2019 pitching holds up, I see the team taking a slight step backwards in 2014. They need too many things to go right and they cannot afford anything else to go wrong with their starting rotation. Atlanta will still battle the Nationals to the bitter end for the NL East crown, but a return to the playoffs this season will have to come via the wildcard route.<\/p>\n
2014 MLB Team Previews – Braves Philadelphia had a solid run in the NL East a few seasons back and Washington won the title in 2012, but the Atlanta Braves have pretty much owned this division since 1991 with 17 postseason appearances over the span of 23 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":62757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[61195,61222,12256,12258,12259,12260,44834,678,12099,11227,2687],"class_list":["post-74372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb-baseball","tag-2014-mlb-team-preview","tag-2014-nl-east-futures","tag-atlanta-braves-picks","tag-braves-futures","tag-braves-odds","tag-braves-predictions","tag-braves-world-series-odds","tag-mlb-betting","tag-nl-east-predictions","tag-nl-east-preview","tag-world-series-futures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74372"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74434,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74372\/revisions\/74434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}