HotBaseballTake: The 2025 Braves’ Collapse Wasn’t Just Bad Luck — It Was a Failure of Preparation
You can blame the baseball gods all you want. Tommy John surgeries, broken elbows, strained hamstrings, shredded shoulders — sure, the Braves’ 2025 season looked cursed.
But when every arm in your rotation explodes, your bullpen crumbles, and you burn through an MLB-record 71 pitchers just to finish the schedule, that’s not a fluke. That’s a system failure.
The Braves didn’t just run out of arms. They ran out of answers.
The Perfect Storm: When the Rotation Fell Apart
By midseason, every single member of the Opening Day rotation was gone — not struggling, gone.
A.J. Smith-Shawver (Tommy John). Spencer Schwellenbach (fractured elbow). Reynaldo López (shoulder surgery). Grant Holmes (elbow inflammation). Chris Sale (fractured rib cage).
Even Spencer Strider, supposedly “healthy,” never looked right — his velocity dipped, his command wobbled, and the old dominance never returned.
At one point, the rotation was a revolving door of openers, minor-leaguers, and bullpen games that blurred into bullpen months. You can’t win in the NL East when you’re using 20 different starters.
The Bullpen: From Strength to Stress Fracture
What was once a weapon turned into a liability.
When starters can’t make it past the fourth inning, you start burning relievers like kindling — and that’s exactly what happened.
By August, guys were pitching on fumes. Joe Jiménez never made it back from knee surgery. Aaron Bummer’s shoulder gave out. Daysbel Hernández, gone. Every night, it felt like someone new was hitting the 60-day IL.
The result: overuse, blown leads, and a bullpen ERA that ballooned as the season dragged on.
The Depth Mirage
Alex Anthopoulos built this team like he was playing fantasy baseball — star power up front, prayers in the back.
When the injuries hit, that lack of organizational pitching depth got exposed fast. The Braves weren’t calling up “next men up.” They were calling up anyone with a functioning arm and a uniform that fit.
By July, they were trading for “inning-eaters” — Erick Fedde, Carlos Carrasco — just to survive the schedule. Not to make a run. Just to get through it.
That’s not a contender’s plan. That’s a triage unit.
The Accountability Problem
Let’s be honest — this wasn’t all about bad luck. It was about bad foresight.
Braves chairman Terry McGuirk tried to spin the “injury narrative,” but even before Chris Sale went down, Atlanta was 34–39.
This team wasn’t elite when healthy — it was already cracking.
After 2024’s warning signs, the front office had every chance to build pitching depth. Instead, they bet it all on staying healthy. That’s not strategy. That’s denial.
The collapse was predictable, and the cracks were visible from March.
The Offense Didn’t Save Them This Time
In 2023, this lineup hit like a freight train. Record-tying 307 home runs. Historic production.
By 2025? The power vanished. Albies and Harris regressed, Riley’s core injury killed his rhythm, and Ronald Acuña Jr. was never 100% after ACL and calf issues.
The bats couldn’t bail out the arms anymore — and when both fail, even Truist Park starts to sound quiet.
The Real Question: Conditioning or Culture?
Look at that injury list — elbows, shoulders, ribs, core, hamstring.
That’s not one freak accident. That’s a pattern.
Maybe it’s a training issue. Maybe it’s a medical one. But at this point, it’s a culture issue. The Braves built a dynasty on efficiency, analytics, and stability — but they lost the edge that kept their players healthy and ready.
It’s time to ask the hard question: is this still a world-class organization, or has it gotten too comfortable living off reputation?
The Bottom Line
Injuries happen. Every team gets hit. But not like this. Not everybody.
When your pitching staff turns into a hospital wing, and your solution is to sign more patients, it’s not bad luck — it’s bad planning.
The 2025 Braves didn’t just run out of pitching. They ran out of accountability.
And until that changes — from the front office to the weight room — nothing else will.
🔥 HotBaseballTake:
The Braves’ 2025 collapse wasn’t about the arms that broke.
It was about the foundation that cracked long before they ever took the mound.