The Atlanta Braves are my hometown MLB team, and I’ll always be a fan. I remember the dry years of the ‘80s when the Braves couldn’t make any magic happen. They turned things around in the ‘90s and set a new standard for fans.
I never want to become one of those entitled sports fans, but I haven’t seen a start to a season that has made me want to give up hope like this one. The Braves are 0-7 to start the season after a West Coast road trip, and it’s not looking all that rosy the day before the team’s first home game.
Bill Shanks, who hosts a sports talk radio show on stations in Middle and South Georgia, encapsulated this horrid start to the season in a post on X. (It’s a long post, so you’ll have to click “show more.”)
In the last seven days, here is what has happened to the Atlanta #Braves:
— BillShanks (@BillShanks) April 3, 2025
0-7
14 runs scored
33 hits
.151 batting average
Shut out twice
Scored one run in a game twice
The bullpen blew three games
Their original 8th inning setup man, Hector Neris, failed and was DFA’d…
Shanks was a guest on the morning show on my favorite sports talk station, and he hilariously reflected the surly dejection of Braves fans everywhere. He told hosts David Johnston and Logan Booker that he started his show Monday singing “Tomorrow” from “Annie” but that he’s even lost that hope.
“When a 55-year-old heterosexual man is singing show tunes on sports radio, things aren’t going well,” Shanks quipped.
Here’s a taste of how badly things have gone this week. On Monday, right-handed pitcher Reynaldo Lopez went on the injured list and will probably miss several months. The same day, left fielder Jurickson Profar received an 80-game suspension for violation of Major League Baseball’s performance-enhancing drug policy.
Statement from the Atlanta Braves: pic.twitter.com/KOplY13FuA
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) March 31, 2025
Eighty games. Sigh.
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Starting pitching has been decent, but relief pitchers have been a massive problem so far this season. The hits haven’t come, and the team even blew a five-run lead on Wednesday night. It’s ugly.
To add insult to injury, the team’s ownership put out a somewhat tone-deaf press release on Wednesday, announcing that Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc. acquired an office building. Womp womp.
I asked PJ Media’s resident expert on public relations, Scott Pinsker, what he thought about the announcement from a PR perspective. Scott and I agreed that the press release wasn’t geared toward Braves fans and that the intended audience was the local business community, but that didn’t stop the grumbling throughout Braves Country.
“Usually, when you sell a story to your fan base, you have more exciting language & focus on the fan experience,” Scott told me. “But it sounds like the Braves anticipated the fan blowback — the ‘Gimme a shortstop, not a building’ crowd — and tried to low-key it.”
Shanks posted on X on Thursday morning:
There is no doubt that property acquisitions and expanding the portfolio is part of the job of #Braves executives to make the company more profitable and more appealing to stockholders.
However, to announce the property acquisition the morning after the team had moved to 0-6, after so many were already questioning ownership regarding the lack of activity to improve the team over the offseason, was a tremendous error in judgement [sic]. Read the room.
Any crisis management team should have known this announcement would not have gone over well, and, like it or not, would have been connected to the team’s already abysmal week and the questions about not putting more of the unbelievable revenue toward the payroll.
Basically, fair or not, many are going to say, “Wait, you can’t afford to sign a new shortstop or to replace the injured Joe Jimenez with an established 8th inning setup man, or to re-sign Max Fried or appropriately replace him, but you can purchase an office complex?”
It might not matter as much if the team had a better record, but this adds to perhaps one of the worst weeks in the history of this franchise.
The word that keeps coming to my lips is “hapless.” The team is hapless. The owners are hapless. When your team is off to a 0-7 start, it’s easy to lose hope, and I’m afraid it’s going to be a long, miserable season for Braves fans. At least my Georgia Bulldogs are the #3 team in college baseball.
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