Do y’all remember the time when Baseball Prospectus would drop their annual PECOTA projections and there would be gnashing of teeth and rending of garments on the Braves Country corner of the internet? That was because for years, if there was any team that represented the whole “PECOTA hates your team” belief, it was the Braves because they’d routinely come in somewhat underrated compared to how the fanbase or even other projection models felt about the team.
Well, those days appear to be over because PECOTA has actually been quite fond of the Braves in recent seasons. Baseball Prospectus has just released their annual PECOTA projections for the 2026 season (and I highly recommend that y’all go over there and subscribe so you can get even more high-quality baseball analysis and data concerning these projections) and just like FanGraphs, PECOTA figures that the Braves are going to bounce back in 2026.
As of right now, PECOTA has the Braves winning 92 games and losing 70 — it’s actually 69.8 but I’m rounding up, as usual. They’re currently projected to win the division with a 57 percent shot at doing that and they’ve also been given a 34 percent shot at making the Wild Card, which has sent them up to a 90 percent shot of making the Postseason. Additionally, PECOTA is giving the Braves a 72 percent shot at making the Divisional Round and a nine percent chance at winning the World Series altogether. That’s once again good for the second-best odds in the National League and they only trail the Dodgers. If PECOTA could actually be infatuated with a team then I’d imagine that it would be singing the words to OutKast’s “Prototype” to the Los Angeles roster.
Here’s a look at one of the graphs that comes associated with the standings, which shows the simulated win percentage for each team in the NL East. I like this because I’m definitely a visual learner and also it gives you a better idea of how the divisional race is projected to shake out.
Once again, it’s looking like this’ll be a three-way dance between the Braves, Mets and Phillies for the NL East crown. PECOTA is actually pretty low on the Phillies but then again, they were also low on them heading into last season and look how that turned out. The point is that once again, we’re not going to know how any of this shakes out until the games actually get played but for now and that there’s always a chance that this could look very different once October rolls around.
With that being said, I think everybody here on the Braves corner of the internet is hoping that these projections actually stick for once. The Braves have had some rosy projections for a couple of seasons now and none of it really came to pass. Here’s hoping that this season actually does go how the projection models figure it will (well, outside of the Dodgers sauntering to another World Series crown) and that the Braves are once again mixing it up with baseball’s elite clubs.
We’re not too far removed from this team spending two-and-a-half years across 2021 through 2021 as one of the most dominant teams in the regular season and hopefully these projections from both PECOTA and FanGraphs signal a return to that level of form for the Braves.
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