There’s certainly plenty to be angry about with how the Braves have performed so far (other than this weekend, of course), but one thing that surely didn’t help from the jump is beginning the 2025 regular season with quite the gauntlet of a schedule. No, this isn’t college football. SOS (Strength of Schedule) isn’t the most predictive measurement for a team in baseball. And as bad as Atlanta has performed up until the last 72 hours, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much at all who the opponent was.

But good grief, the team kicked off the campaign with the always-dreaded West Coast road trip, featuring seven of its first games against both the Padres and Dodgers. Then, after going winless during that slate of games, a much more doable series with the Marlins was proceeded by yet another tough stretch of competition: the Phillies, Rays and Blue Jays — all of which are solid, as two of those three teams are currently playing above-.500 ball at the moment. The Twins coming to town was a welcome sight. And, fortunately, once the team gets through this coming week, the competition for the Braves becomes even more favorable, especially the last week of April and as the calendar turns to May.

Looking ahead

The next two series for the Braves are admittedly a bit challenging. Yes, at 9-13 overall, the Cardinals aren’t a top-tier team right now, especially when away from Busch Stadium (1-9 record in away games). But St. Louis still appears to be an NL Central contender thanks to above-average production from both its offense (109 wRC+) and pitchers (3.62 FIP), ranking within the top-10 in the majors in both categories entering Sunday’s games.

After the Cards, the Braves get a much-needed day off this Thursday before heading to Arizona to face the Diamondbacks. If you’ve been keeping up with MLB as a whole this season, then you’re probably fully aware of how dangerous this D’Backs team can be. Entering Sunday, Arizona (12-9 overall record) has won seven of its last ten, thanks to a lineup that ranks third in the majors in both runs (117) and wRC+ (121). Arizona’s pitching has been a bit of a different story, but with 5.5 runs per game from the offense, the Diamondbacks have managed fine as a high-scoring team with below-average run prevention.

Assuming the Braves can hold its own against both the Cardinals and Diamondbacks, Atlanta has a chance to start climbing back up the standings… and soon. After facing those two teams, the Braves will finish up April with a three-game set against the bottom-dwelling Rockies. Yes, a weekend set versus the LA Dodgers looms after that. But then it’s back to taking care of business for the Braves, as the next three series following that re-match with the Dodgers features very beatable teams.

Braves schedule after STL & ARI series

• Rockies x3
• Dodgers x3
• Reds x4
• Pirates x3
• Nationals x4

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The five series listed above spans from April 28 to May 15, or 17 games. Looking at it series by series, it’s reasonable to believe the Braves should win most of these games.

We know how bad at everything the Rockies are. The Dodgers have actually looked more mortal than I think a lot of us thought they would coming into the season. The Reds are a pretty solid team in terms of pitching, but it’s a bottom-ten club on offense. The Pirates are even worse than the Reds with the bats, and despite strong pitching so far, it’s still a last-place team. And the Nationals, while they can be scrappy at times, haven’t really hit or pitched well so far.

I realize Atlanta has won less than 40% of its games so far this season (38% to be exact). It’s hard to feel optimistic about this upcoming stretch of games for the Braves. Expecting this team to suddenly win at such a higher clip does admittedly feel a bit farfetched, no matter how good or bad the competition is. But just think, if Atlanta can actually take care of business and win those series listed above, save for maybe the Dodgers, that’s at the very least an 11-6 record for that stretch. Throw in maybe a couple of sweeps in there (let’s say versus the Rockies & Pirates), and the Braves could come out of this with as many as 13 wins, definitely making up some ground in the standings.

This may all be wishful thinking. At the end of the day, this is Major League Baseball — all 30 teams are capable of beating each other any given day. And it doesn’t help that we’re 20+ games into the season and the Braves have just now won back-to-back games (that sweep against the Twins really comes at a perfect time). But something’s definitely brewing with this team. The Braves showed it can play to its potential this weekend, outscoring Minnesota 16-9 in the much-needed sweep. And if that trend continues, by the end of May, we could be looking at an entirely different situation in the NL East.

Let’s just hope at that point it’s a better situation and not one that’s evolved into something even worse.

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Photo: Andrew Mordzynski/Icon Sportswire