The Atlanta Braves avoided large criticism for underperforming during the 2024 MLB season because of injuries. Braves chairman Terry McGuirk sounds hopeful the team’s fanbase and baseball pundits will give the organization another pass for a vastly disappointing 2025 campaign for the same reason.

McGuirk is already pushing for that possibility. On Thursday, the chairman stated injuries are mostly to blame for the Braves poor 2025 season.

“We’re disappointed with the year. There’s some underperformance, but the majority of it is injuries and missing players. Everyone is back for spring training ’26,” McGuirk stated, via The Athletic’s Evan Derllich. “We were a favorite to potentially be in the World Series this year.

“I think we will line up in that kind of a mode again next spring, and we will take a very hard look at the team and at everything that contributes to winning and losing during this offseason.”

McGuirk made that statement while largely bragging about what the Braves organization has built from a financial perspective. The team reported in a quarterly earnings report Thursday that Atlanta’s revenues increased 12% through the first six months of this year.

“What we have built in Atlanta is the model that every other MLB franchise is chasing because of our ability to deliver consistent results in a cyclical sports team environment,” said McGuirk.

It’s become rather easy to criticize anything about the Braves this season. That’s because there’s only three teams “chasing” the Braves in the standings.

The team was projected to compete for the World Series and yet they sit 19 games below the .500 mark. They are also 17.5 games out of first place in the National League East, a division many thought they could reclaim this summer.

Still, McGuirk’s comments come across as, at best, tone deaf, and at worst, lacking accountability.

The chairman could have saved himself by stating at least some of the increased revenue the team has seen through 2025 will be reinvested in payroll. But McGuirk mostly avoided the question.

“As we have the continuing upward trend of our business, will those dollars be reinvested in payroll? I’d start off saying that we have been a top-10 payroll team for some period of time,” McGuirk said. “I see us continuing to maybe move up that ladder.”

While not untrue, the Braves allowed starting pitchers Max Fried and Charlie Morton to each leave in free agency last offseason. The team also did little to help the offense, which wasn’t good in 2024. Signing left fielder Jurickson Profar was Atlanta’s only major offseason acquisition.

Instead of spending, the Braves counted on injured players returning to form. It didn’t happen, and it shouldn’t be a strategy the team uses again.

For one, there’s a few Braves stars who are proving to be injured often. The organization can’t continously just hope those players finally stay healthy. Acuña and other players being injured is a trend the Braves have to anticipate going forward.

Yes, the Braves experienced bad luck with injuries this season. Profar’s suspension also badly hurt the team.

But two things can be true. The organization didn’t do enough to build quality MLB caliber depth to overcome IL stints. That’s why the injuries have been such a problem this season.

Secondly, the Braves weren’t particularly good this season when healthy. The team was 34-39 before Chris Sale landed on the injured list.

With Acuña in the lineup, the Braves are 21-34. In Spencer Strider starts this season, Atlanta is 5-10.

Those are all signs of a bad baseball team. Betting on it changing while making only alterations around the margins of the roster isn’t going to work for 2026 when it didn’t this year.

The Braves could be in for a very rude awakening if they approach the offseason with McGuirk’s attitude that the team only needs better health to be elite in 2026. And ironically, one of the main places where that rude awakening could happen is where the Braves are still having success — the bottom line.