The Braves Are Young and Old and Rebuilding For the Present

For 14 consecutive seasons between 1991 and 2005, the Atlanta Braves won their division. They probably wil never do that again. But the Braves actually have a current streak that's even longer than their divisional dynasty. October 12, 2001 may not ring any bells for you, but that date marks the last time the Braves won a postseason series.

This drought isn't the only reason behind why the Braves find themselves entering this season rushing to complete what has been a years-long rebuild, but it's a major one. The other reason is their new ballpark. The Braves have made the move from a perfectly good stadium in the city to a perfectly good (and superfluous) stadium in the suburbs.

As nice as SunTrust Park and the surrounding Battery area in Cobb County will be, it is going to be very difficult to convince fans to wade through an insane amount of local traffic just to see a team struggle to win 70 games. As such, the Braves made the decision to build a team for 2017 that can hopefully be a little better than that, and deliver some entertainment value with a mix of familiar faces, rising stars, and promising prospects.

You never really hear about pro sports teams just trying to be respectable. It's an especially awkward spot to be in for a franchise that was once the model of sustainable winning, but that's where the Braves find themselves in 2017.

The team made good on its promise to raise payroll in the offseason by spending some money on a pair of graybeard pitchers. It's hard to imagine fans driving across town to see Bartolo Colon or R.A. Dickey, but if you make the trip, you could definitely do much worse than a couple pitchers who are staring Father Time in the face and laughing, floating 89-mph fastballs and a knuckleballs past men young enough to be their sons.

Colon and Dickey have both been remarkably durable in the latter stages of their careers, and they're being brought in on one-year deals to do what they've been especially good at doing for the past few seasons: eat innings. R.A. Dickey has thrown at least 160 innings over the past seven seasons, including five consecutive seasons of 200+ innings thrown from 2011 until 2015. Colon has four consecutive seasons of 190+ innings pitched under his belt.

This is important because the Braves went through 16 different starting pitchers last year. A team like the Los Angeles Dodgers, built for depth, and that went through 15 starters of its own last year, can handle that type of chaos. A rebuilding squad like the Braves ends up sending guys like The Artist Formerly Known as Fausto Carmona out to the mound as a starter in 2016. Colon and Dickey ease some of the pressure on resurgent Julio Teheran, talented right-hander like Mike Foltynewicz, and Jaime Garcia, the latter of whom is looking to bounce back after a rough second half in 2017. The Braves won't have anything near a top-tier rotation, but they probably won't suck either.

A stronger rotation would help take the pressure off of what could be a decent bullpen. Jim Johnson is coming off of a career year according to fWAR, which had him at 1.4 WAR after he produced a 3.06 ERA and a 2.71 FIP with 20 saves. That performance earned him a two-year deal, and he'll be heading into the season as the closer. As long as Johnson is the closer, Arodys Vizcaino will be the set-up man. If Vizcaino can overcome the nagging injuries that seemed to hit him at inopportune times last season, he could very well take the closing duties on merit. Then there's Mauricio Cabrera, the flamethrowing righty whose four-seamer and sinker were clocked at over 100 mph by Pitchf/x on a regular basis. Of course, the concern with pitchers who have heat like this is that he may not know where that fastball is going all of the time. If he can get his control under, well, control, then the Braves could have a great weapon coming out of their pen this season.

When it comes to the position players, the Braves already have the skeleton intact for what could be a good team in the near future. Naturally, you have to start with Freddie Freeman. In your quest to avoid paying too much attention to a 90+ loss team in 2016, you may have missed out on the fact that according to fWAR, Freeman was the best first baseman in baseball. Freeman's 2016 could have just been a career year, but he's only 27. The bigger, better power numbers (.569 slugging, .267 isolated power, and 34 homers, all career highs) could be the new normal as the Braves move into a ballpark that seems to be tailor-made for his strengths. Braves GM John Coppolella once said that he'd cut off his right arm before trading him. If Freeman continues hitting at this clip, then Coppolella will have both arms intact for the foreseeable future.

The foreseeable future is actually looking bright for the Braves, thanks to Dansby Swanson. Swanson was the diamond in the crown that the Braves pilfered from the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Shelby Miller trade The Braves got lucky when he came just short of losing his rookie status in 2016, which means that his candidacy for the Rookie of the Year award should be a big storyline this season on a team in need of them.

The other jewel in the Great Desert Heist of 2015 recently won a Gold Glove for his efforts in center field for 2016, so the Braves are going to feel pretty comfortable with Ender Inciarte roaming around for them in that spot. He'll have to do a lot of roaming, since he'll be flanked by Nick Markakis in right, whose production is a beautiful case study in being consistently unremarkable, and Matt Kemp in left. Kemp has shed some of his San Diego weight in an effort to return to the form that made him a star back in Los Angeles. The bat is still there—the Braves had a shockingly-good offense down the stretch last season after they acquired him—but the main question with Kemp is whether he'll be able to produce with the glove as well. Either way, his bat is too good to keep out of the lineup, so the lovely taxpayers of Cobb County should be treated to 30-plus homers from Kemp in the ballpark that they're footing most of the bill for.

If the Braves have all of this going for them, then what's keeping them from turning their first season in their shiny, publicly-funded playground in the suburbs into a playoff season? Aside from the fact that their division already has two bonafide postseason contenders in the form of the Washington Nationals and New York Mets, their lineup still has major question marks when it comes to production.

A Kurt Suzuki-Tyler Flowers platoon at catcher isn't going to set the world on fire. Adonis Garcia has done a great job of defying the odds to even make it to the bigs, but he's probably reached his peak as a consistently below average player. Brandon Phillips is still a very capable defender at second base, but if his late-season resurgence last year turns out to be smoke and mirrors, then he'll just be keeping second base warm for Ozzie Albies' inevitable call-up. Speaking of resurgences, there's still good reason to believe that last year's offensive surge in the second half of the season could end up being a mirage. If that turns out to be the case, then this team will come closer to 90 losses than they will to 80 wins.

No, they probably won't be a .500 or better team in 2017, but this team could serve as a bridge (although bridge is a loaded word right now in Cobb County) to a future that sees the Braves once again winning in sustainable fashion. There is a future in which prospects like Albies, Austin Riley, Sean Newcomb and Max Fried mesh with Freeman, Inciarte, Teheran and a grown-up Swanson to make SunTrust Park the site of the franchise's next great run.

The 15-year drought without a playoff series victory will likely stretch on for another year, but don't count on it to last longer than Turner Field did as a baseball venue.

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