BALTIMORE — Atlanta Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos held a media session before a game.
That alone sort of says it all about how the six-time reigning National League East Division champions have been playing.
“I don’t normally do scrums during the season because we’ve done well,” he told reporters Wednesday. “If I’m doing them, that means we’re not playing well.”
This is, of course, all relative.
The Braves, at 35-30, have the fourth-best record in the NL. But they lost their fifth straight game Wednesday night, 4-2 to the host Baltimore Orioles, and they are a distant second in the division standings, 10 games behind the league-leading Philadelphia Phillies.
And so Anthopoulos was available to discuss the disappointing reality.
He acknowledged that by their standards, the Braves aren’t looking good, but there’s obviously a lot of season left. Right now, with the midseason break for the MLB All-Star Game still a month away, all three division leaders have significant leads: Philadelphia in the East, the Milwaukee Brewers in the Central and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the West.
Atlanta is the best of the rest, though, and one of just five teams above .500 in the NL.
Three seasons ago, the Braves went 88-73, but that was enough to win the division and they went on to win the World Series, the franchise’s first MLB title since 1995. The Braves won 101 games in 2022 and 104 games last year, but both times they were eliminated in the divisional round of the playoffs by a wild-card Philadelphia team.
“The Phillies are obviously playing exceptionally well — best team arguably in the game right now — but it’s about making sure you get to the playoffs one way or the other,” Anthopoulos said. “Right now, the NL, I bet you if you took a lot of these teams and these front offices, they’d tell you the same thing. No one’s playing the way they thought they would — barring Brewers, Dodgers, Phillies.”
Still, the Braves hadn’t dropped five straight since 2017, the last time they didn’t win the NL East. Two years ago, the Braves came from behind to win to win the division after the New York Mets had a big lead.
A similar comeback this year will be tough for Atlanta, which lost right-handed ace Spencer Strider after two starts to season-ending elbow surgery and more recently lost leadoff hitter, right fielder and reigning NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. to season-ending knee surgery.
Although he was off to a slow start at the plate, the potential for Acuña to get hot was at least promising for the Braves, who have struggled offensively over the first two months after leading the majors in most hitting categories last year with a power-heavy lineup.
Anthopoulos said he’s been more active than usual in terms of pursuing trades, but nothing is imminent.
“The offensive issues seem like they’re spread across the league,” Anthopoulos said. “A lot of GMs are saying the same thing. People feel like they’re not hitting the way they can.”