The Principality

It's been six months since that amazing night in Houston, when (as if you needed reminding) the Atlanta Braves ended 26 years without a championship. It's a strange feeling starting a season as the team to beat. Sure, in the NL East we've had targets on our backs before, but this time the entire league is ready and waiting to take a shot at the World Champions. It's a challenge, but it's a great position to be in and with a bit of luck we won't disappoint in our quest to repeat.

...

It’s the morning after the night before. I keep having to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming and the Atlanta Braves, who did not get their first winning record until 5th August, who lost their star player and talisman to a season-ending injury on 10th July, who were unsure whether to buy or sell at the trade deadline and were given a 0.3% chance of winning the World Series at the start of August are now the champions of Major League Baseball for the first time in 26 years...

In more than 20 years covering the Braves, it is hard to remember a season quite like the one we find ourselves in now. The sheer number of serious injuries we have had and to still be in contention is quite remarkable and testament to the leadership of the manager, Brian Snitker, and the pragmatic approach to the trade market of the GM, Alex Anthopoulos.

We started the season lacking a backup catcher. Alex Jackson and William Contreras were deemed t...

I would normally have written a blog by now, being six weeks into the season. Though I have been feeling rather uninspired of late and the motivation to sit down and write something just hasn’t been there. Partly I have been waiting for the Braves to kick into gear, which is something else that just hasn’t happened either. It has been a very lacklustre start to the campaign. We have never been better than .500 and have looked both collectively and individually woeful. But as ...

It’s been a few weeks now since the Braves’ season was ended by Cody Bellinger and the Dodgers. Proving too strong for the Rays, Los Angeles marched relentlessly to the World Series they have so coveted for so many years and so with the last out of the Series, as it always does, the baseball season ended. It’s fair to say that the 2020 season was like no other. For the most part, it has been memorable for all the wrong reasons. Deep into Spring Training, the virus that h...

In early March, at the time I would normally start preparing this website for the new season, it seemed a far-fetched idea that the disease emerging from China would have such a profound effect on the world. After all, we had seen SARS, Bird Flu and Swine Flu come and go without much disruption and at the time it was probably felt that Covid-19 would follow much the same pattern.

As Spring Training got underway, it was becoming clearer that this disease was different. Unl...

It’s been a few weeks now since the Atlanta Braves were unceremoniously dumped out of the Major League Baseball playoffs by the St Louis Cardinals, thus continuing the team’s postseason dry spell that dates back to 2001. After a period of reflection this loss ranks right up there with the most difficult to take. In part this is due to the fact that the team’s division rivals, the Washington Nationals are 2 games up in the World Series at point of writing and in part becaus...

It hardly seems any time at all since I last wrote and said the Atlanta Braves needed to improve significantly if they were to challenge for a second straight NL East title. On May 13th I wrote that 21-20 (becoming 83-79 over a full season) would not be enough for a division win in a competitive NL East, nor enough for a wild card spot in a stacked National League. Yet so much has changed since I wrote that blog. Dallas Keuchel has come on board as the big-name ace, Mike Foltynewicz has be...

Six weeks into the 2019 season and I can’t help having a feeling of frustration over what my beloved Atlanta Braves have done so far. Coming off a ridiculous 20 games in 20 days, of which the final 10 were on the road we find ourselves a solitary game over .500 at 21-20. This team knows it is better than that. It also knows that extrapolated out for an entire season, 83-79 will not be enough to defend the NL East, nor will it be enough to win a Wild Card playoff spot.

With 2019 Braves baseball just days away, excitement is building as to what this young team can achieve as an encore to their unexpected 2018 NL East crown. The core pieces of the team have all returned, with outfielder Nick Markakis back for one more year and fan favourite Brian McCann returning to the club following 5 years in the American League with the Yankees and Astros. Joining them is former AL MVP and marquee signing Josh Donaldson to man the hot corner and provide a big bat to hel...