Next time we’re running a poll on everyone’s favorite Ninja Turtle
A few days ago, I asked for a pencils-down answer about the Braves’ prospective success in 2025, and a bunch of people supplied me with an answer. Here’s what happened. First, the division question, where a majority agreed that the Braves would return to the top of the NL East this upcoming season:
The weighted average of those responses tilts slightly closer to second place, owing to the 13 percent of folks who responded anticipating a third-place finish… which is at odds with the median outcome of any projection system I’ve seen,but that’s why it’s a poll of people, after all.
The question I was more interested in was an assessment of the team’s finish more broadly — sometimes divisions are strong (sorry, Mariners, in perpetuity) and sometimes they’re weak, and win totals mean somewhat more these days due to a more balanced schedule. These responses were fairly similar — only about 13 percent of respondents, in aggregate, felt the Braves would miss the playoffs, while the majority jived with the projections’ central estimates in anticipating a 90-plus win team, but not one that goes ham and hits triple digits in the “W” column.
I amuse myself by noting that if you assign a single win total to each response in this range, the weighted average comes out to 93 wins, which is what’s showing right now as the point estimate for the team’s forecasted wins on FanGraphs’ playoff odds page. The system works, by which I mean, poll results about things that can be forecasted are often strongly influenced by said forecasts (and sometimes vice versa).
Anyway, the graphics above were brought to you by FanDuel, our partner in the SB Nation Reacts thing-a-majig. Thanks for voting, well done, yay, etc. etc. An actual Spring Training game featuring the Braves today, who’d a thunk it?