Reviewing some preseason win predictions for the 2017 Braves

Happy Friday, everyone. The Braves currently sit at 71-88, with three games remaining against the Miami Marlins. If they win two of them, they can avoid the 90-loss mark. If they lose their remaining games, they’ll finish with a modest three-game improvement over their 2016 total of 68 wins.

I find the interplay between preseason projections and actual team performance fascinating, so much so that I went and dug up this old post.

Here’s what the TC masthead thought about the Braves’ 2017 win total, in aggregate:

You’ll see a funny thing there: the Braves can’t actually reach 75 wins this season, not anymore. So, we were a little optimistic. (I myself was in the very popular “76 wins” bucket.)

But, what about the lifeblood of TC, the commentariat?

A little more spread out, with the overall range being from 60 to 90, but still mostly clustered in that mid-70s area. The most common win total here was 72, followed 75 and 76. Good news: 72 is still very achievable!

And, of course, there’s Fangraphs:

So, yeah. The Braves: they are who we thought they were (well, most of us, anyway). A little worse than that, even. And they got there in a very different way (Swanson being terrible, Teheran being pretty terrible, Freeman getting injured, the surprising contributions of Johan Camargo, the ascension of Kurt Suzuki, Ender Inciarte’s really weird defensive arm score, etc.). I guess this is a bit of a lesson - for every 2017 Minnesota Twins (projected to win 75, will win 83-86), there’s a 2017 New York Mets, and one or two 2017 Atlanta Braves.

So, that’s perhaps a little disappointing. But not unexpected.

Bonus: it’s a beautiful, quiet Friday afternoon. In lieu of me doing this in a game preview, I’ll put in the work to answer any question posed in the comments, whether on the wins topic or something else.