Taking Fans Temperature of the Atlanta Braves

The Over/Under Contest is sealed up now, awaiting the end of the season before we figure out how all of your forecasting went.  Until then, we have the trends to show you.

The Atlanta Braves are now 1-5 on this young season.  With that, there have already been at least 3 games that could/should have turned out differently, absent a bevy of blunders, poor situational hitting, or bullpen failures.

But baseball is a marathon and 5 games does not yet define a full season, so there’s hope that the issues can be reckoned with and resolved before much longer.

With that, I asked our readers to make their own guesses as to how the season’s pressing questions might fall – a series of “over/under” choices to help us gauge how the year might go.

When developing these questions – and especially in selecting the over/under point – the goal is to guess where a 50-50 balance point might fall and see if your votes follow suit.

In most cases… that didn’t happen. 

But that still tells us a few things, so let’s do a quick review of your answers and see how you – the fans – view the now-in-progress season.

The Team Questions

How many wins will the Braves have during the regular season?

• 78 or more (65.2%)
• 77 or less (34.8%)

This number was selected with some deference to the Las Vegas over/under line for the Braves.  Personally, I’m on record hoping for 82 wins.  That kind of a count is starting off slowly, but it turns out that y’all are equally optimistic.  I like that.

Of the 25 players on the Opening Day roster, how many will still be with the club in any capacity (includes demoted, DL) on September 1st?

• 21 or more (80.4%)
• 20 or less (19.4%)

At the time this question was constructed, we didn’t know the final construction of the bench, but as things have unfolded, this is truly looking like a no-brainer.

Now there are some interesting decisions that may come down as the team adds new bodies here and there:  Of the 4 man bench-role players (Peterson, d’Arnaud, Recker, Bonifacio), the latter three have no minor league options and if (when?) they get replaced, there’s at least a chance any could be claimed by another club.

Then there’s the trade possibilities, which are numerous.  Atlanta could sell off 4-5 assets before August, easily.

Part of the complication is that you might feel that the Braves could hold this team together if they are playing really well.  The odds of this happening?  Maybe 19.4%?

With Swanson and Phillips in the middle infield, where will the Braves rank in double plays turned this season (13th in 2016)?

• Top 8 in the NL (77.4%)
• Bottom 7 of the NL (22.6%)

So far… not so many DP’s turned.  In fact, there have been nearly as many botched attempts as successful ones to this point.

We have seen a lot of grounders, so hopefully this will work to erase runners.  Glad to see that so many think this will work.

The Braves drew just over 2 million fans in 80 home dates last year. How will they do in 2017?

• 2,750,000 or better (75%)
• less than that (25%)

That’s going to be a tall order, and requires an average of 33,950 per game at SunTrust with its capacity of 41,149.

The final numbers for 2016 came to 24,949 per contest, and the Braves haven’t broken the 30,000 barrier since 2013.  It was 2007 when they almost reached 2,750,000.

Between the new stadium the better (?) team, and having a new home location closer to the ticket buyers, it should be close… we’ll see how this one goes.

With the funky right field wall at SunTrust, how many inside-the-park homers will we see at home in 2017?

• 3 or more (76.8%)
• 2 or fewer (23.32%)

This is a trap question, no doubt.  There could be anywhere from 0 to 5 inside-the-parkers… with the wall having nothing to do it!

But the new wall does add a bit of randomness to the equation of drives laced to right field.  Between brick, fence, and padding there are caroms that just might be a little… odd.

BUT… it still has to happen, so I for one am curious to see how right field plays.