Braves Regain Ground in Latest Power Rankings

The Atlanta Braves are coming off a strong West Coast trip taking both series against the San Fransisco Giants and Los Angeles Angels. The Braves firmly hold the final spot in the National League Wildcard with a 66-58 record. However, they still have their eyes on the division lead, and it is still within reach. The team heads into the week seven games outside the NL East lead.

No easy task, but definitely not impossible.

On Monday, MLB dropped its latest power rankings and the Braves moved up a spot to 12th in the latest polls. As they are set to begin a tough stretch of games, here is what Will Leitch had to say about Atlanta heading into the week.

Have the Braves steadied the ship? The team that was bumped out of Wild Card contention a week ago is back in the driver’s seat for the third spot, with only the Mets within two games of them. We’ll see if they can hang in with all the games they have coming up against the Phillies: Seven of their next 13 games are against their division rivals.

The Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies have a near identical strength of schedule for the rest of the season, so the seven games against each other (with three starting on Tuesday) might be the most important games left on the schedule across all of Major League Baseball.

The biggest issue for Atlanta remains to be availability as the team looks to be without another All Star for the foreseeable future . A pitch hit Braves third baseman Austin Riley in the series finale against the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday, and although no injured list designation has been made at the time of this writing it seems very likely. The Braves also do not have many internal options for his replacement moving forward if they need to take that route.

It's been an interesting season to navigate for general manager Alex Anthopoulos. Call it luck (or in this case, unlucky) , grit, or whatever you like but the fact that they are still holding a playoff spot with the roster they are fielding is impressive enough.