Atlanta Braves enter September with all of their goals in sight

As the calendar flips to the final month of the regular season, the Atlanta Braves have all of their goals within reach.

All you can really ask for as a fan is that your team play meaningful baseball into September. For the second straight year, the Atlanta Braves have certainly delivered there.

With two games against the Chicago White Sox to close out the month of August, the Atlanta Braves will likely enter the final month of the regular season with at least a five-game lead in the NL East.

According to FanGraphs, they have a 100 percent chance of making the playoffs now. Sitting at 81-54, they most likely just need to win 10 more games to clinch at least a Wild Card spot.

But obviously, their sights are much higher as they look to repeat as NL East division champs and hold off the Washington Nationals.

After my last article where I blasted Brian Snitker for not resting his star players more this season like he said they would in the offseason, some people pointed out that I never say anything positive about this team … and that’s simply not true.

I’m a firm believer in jinxes, and it just seems like any time I write something positive about the team or an individual player, something bad happens.

However, I do intend for this be a very upbeat article about my beloved Atlanta Braves.

A lot of people talk about how the Atlanta Braves only won one title during that run of division titles and think somehow that’s a bad thing.

But what a lot of people don’t understand, the love that I get from baseball doesn’t just come from winning that last game of the season, it’s more about the 90 or 100-plus wins it took to get there.

Yes, ultimately you always want to win the World Series and that’s the goal.

But I will argue that the actual fun of the baseball season comes from the journey, and the Atlanta Braves are taking us on quite the journey in 2019.

The offense has been fun to watch all season with a great mix of young players and veterans.

On the other hand, the pitching staff has virtually been rebuilt from top-to-bottom but is finally starting to take shape.

And now we enter September with everything still in sight. A 14-game stretch early in September with seven against the Nationals and seven against the Phillies will likely determine who wins the division.

Ronald Acuna Jr., Freddie Freeman, and Josh Donaldson have one month left to prove they deserve to be in the MVP discussion.

Mike Soroka has maybe five starts left to prove he belongs not only in the NL Rookie of the Year conversation, but the NL CY Young as well.

And if the Atlanta Braves win the division and enter the postseason as the two seed, they’ll have a favorable matchup in either the Cardinals or Cubs in the NLDS. Which means we could see the Atlanta Braves advance in the postseason for the first time since 2001.

And then who knows what could happen, but the point is, they’ve set themselves up for that opportunity to become a reality.

What more could a fan ask for entering the final month of the regular season?

We are all fans, and being a fan means you are allowed to get emotional at times — positively and negatively. But I hope all fans sit back and realize how great the overall journey has been, and enjoy this final month of the regular season.