I’m old enough to remember when the Atlanta Braves were a juggernaut — the annual favorites to win the National League and maybe even the World Series. That was fun while it lasted, but the 2025 Braves are a different beast altogether. This Braves team has all the talent and name-brand players, but none of the actual production.
Atlanta has suffered through back-to-back seasons with crippling injuries up and down the roster. It’s hard to blame anyone in particular for what feels like a black magic curse, but the Braves are trending in the wrong direction. After a season in which Atlanta barely clung to a Wild Card spot, the 2025 Braves are 16 games below .500 and 12 games out of the Wild Card race. The Braves are just… bad?
It’s strange for a team with Chris Sale, Spencer Strider, Ronald Acuña, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, (*deep breath*), Raisel Iglesias, Ozzie Albies, Jurickson Profar and Marcell Ozuna — all All-Stars within the past few years — to just kind of suck. But that’s where we are at, and ESPN’s latest ranking of the best MLB players shines a harsh spotlight on the challenge facing GM Alex Anthopoulos in the years ahead.
ESPN ranks zero Braves in MLB Top 50
ESPN put out its ranking of the 50 best MLB players from the 2025 season. Zero Braves made the list, a sobering reminder of how challenging this season has been in Atlanta.
Now, it’s important to note that Atlanta is basing this on valued supplied in the 2025 campaign. So while Acuña, Sale, Olson and others almost certainly crack this list in a broader sense, the Braves’ core pieces simply have not been healthy enough this season. And many of their foundational pieces — Riley, Albies, Michael Harris, etc. — have struggled immensely relative to expectations, in addition to being constantly hurt.
That leads Anthopoulos to a crossroads. Atlanta has not rendered top-50 value from a single player this season, and yet virtually the entire core is locked up through 2026 — at least. Meanwhile, the Braves also have zero top-50 prospects, per MLB Pipeline, with only one (No. 81, Cam Caminiti) in the top 100. He is a 19-year-old in Single-A and won’t touch the majors for several years to come.
Braves are stuck between a challenging present and a middling future
Atlanta’s future is bleak relative to most teams and the present is difficult to discern. The Braves should be competitive with this roster in 2026, but that’s assuming a level of health and consistency that has not come to fruition in two years. Sometimes you need to reckon with a clear, irrevocable trend. Acuña has suffered two major knee injuries. Sale isn’t getting younger. Half the pitching staff feels like it is coming off of Tommy John surgery. Something has to change.
The Braves did not sell at the trade deadline. Anthopoulos has made it clear that he has no intention of a teardown. And yet, unless this expensive core can rally to profound effect, he may be digging Atlanta into a deeper grave.
