With their 4-3 win over the Miami Marlins on Tuesday (Sept. 25), the Atlanta Braves clinched a wild-card playoff spot in the NL.
The Braves have a shot at catching the Washington Nationals for the NL East title with a 4.5-game deficit, but with eight games remaining in the regular season, that’s not likely to happen.
Atlanta thus awaits the second NL Wild Card and will face that team in a one-game playoff on Oct. 5. It appears that team will be the St. Louis Cardinals, though the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers are 3.5 games behind and still have a shot.
The lineup and rotation that Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez has employed during the season’s second half has worked wonderfully. Atlanta is 15-7 thus far through September, so the skipper probably isn’t going to mess with what’s clearly working well.
Having said that, here’s how the Braves roster will probably line up once the postseason begins.
One note: Other postseason roster prediction articles that you’ll see on B/R also include a “Position Battles” slide. I didn’t write one for the Braves because I don’t feel there really is a position battle.
All eight spots on the field are spoken for, and the competitions that might exist are for bench spots, which were mentioned in those particular slides.
All statistics cited were current before play began on Sept. 25.