The Braves fell to 0-7 after Shohei Ohtani walked it off in LA on Wednesday night. They are Major League Baseball’s only winless team.

You can’t win the division in April, but you can certainly begin to lose it. They’re five games back on April 3rd, which is hard to fathom. Even the Pirates remain in contention in the NL Central.

A quick primer for those of you who have not watched Atlanta play:

  • free agent signing Jurickson Profar was suspended 80 games for PEDs
  • they did have to open with a rough, seven-game road trip against San Diego and LA…
  • …but they couldn’t score a run against SD’s 3rd and 4th starters (Randy Vasquez and Nick Pivetta)
  • Marcella Ozuna has seven strikeouts and 13 walks, that’s good for a .188 average and .552 on-base percentage
  • the starting pitching hasn’t been lighting the world on fire
  • Ronald Acuna Jr. is still more than a month away in his injury return
  • Spencer Strider is a little closer to return, but still out
  • Reynaldo Lopez has shoulder inflammation

The Braves have made the playoffs every year since 2018.  Only the Dodgers and Astros have longer active streaks. Atlanta does return home for six games against Miami and Philly, so you have to think they’ll get off the schneid at some point, but hopefully not. They’re probably going to have a season like the Mets did last year, where they start really poor, then Acuna and Strider return and they quietly start to put it together over the summer. One day you look up and they’re in wild card contention. But for now, we are laughing: