Don’t worry, the Braves will absolutely be back next year

After winning 90-games in a season where almost everyone wrote them off, the Atlanta Braves announced their arrival and aren’t going anywhere.

There was a very distinct sound that vibrated from Atlanta on Monday night. It wasn’t the sad sound of a team’s season ending, rather it was the boom of a team arriving at the station well ahead of schedule.

Monday was the end of the Atlanta Braves season, as the Los Angeles Dodgers finally finished off the pesky Baby Braves the way many expected them to. But if you were only focusing on the star power of the Dodgers roster then you missed the real story of this NLDS showdown. Atlanta lost over 90-games the last three seasons and hadn’t played October baseball since 2013. No one expected this team to be anywhere close to competitive this season, and it answered by winning the NL East with a roster of plucky stars on the rise and seasoned veterans passing down wisdom as they helped lead the charge. Nothing about this roster looked like it would work in April, but it did. Most importantly, the Braves are only just getting started.

In stark contrast some of the superteams that were constructed this year, the Braves have organically culled together a young group of players that are growing towards peaking all at the same time. Ronald Acuna is the face of the youth movement, and is all but assured the NL Rookie of the Year this season. He missed some time in the middle of the season after a scary injury that was thankfully less serious than it looked, but that hardly slowed his production. Acuna posted 26 home runs, .259 ISO, and .552 slugging percentage while boasting a 4.1bWAR. Atlanta was on the rise without Acuna but once he became a regular part of the lineup things got a lot brighter.

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But the Braves are deeper than the flash of Acuna. Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson, and Johan Camargo are all 24-years-old and ready to become the best young infield in baseball. The average age of Atlanta’s payroll this year is just over 27, and a lot of these young pieces are club controlled for the next couple of years. Arbitration will lead to inflated salaries, but whatever the Braves end up paying will be a bargain for the type of talent they have.

Then there are the veterans. Atlanta has the most exciting group of young players in baseball but the likes of Nick Markakis, Kurt Suzuki, Tyler Flowers, and Lucas Duda have helped balance the youth with wisdom. Freddie Freeman is a Superstar and the elder statesman of the team. He’s been through the end of the Brian Cox era, the debacle that followed, and has come out on the other side a leader that fans already hold in high regard as this generation’s Chipper Jones. It’s a near perfect blend of talent.

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Atlanta has the type of roster teams tank and trade to get. The soil of their farm system is so rich that the Braves were able to make a deadline trade for pitching without sacrificing any of the most important pieces of the future. That’s a tremendous well to be able to go back to this winter. While the Dodgers were busy trading for Manny Machado, the Braves were able to stand pat with the infield it has stitched together over the years and have confidence that it was set the way it was. That’s not a wrong opinion to have, and the gamble paid off. It’s easy to see Machado with the Dodgers beating the Braves and say that Atlanta didn’t make the right move, but bookmark that take and return to it this time next year.

This team was supposed to get better this year but not skip the line the way it did. Atlanta’s season might be over but the Braves aren’t going anywhere.