3 Atlanta Braves to blame for falling flat in another early postseason exit

Another year, another early playoff exit for the Atlanta Braves, who were bounced out of the postseason after a 5-4 loss to the San Diego Padres in Wild Card Game 2 on Wednesday night. In one sense, it's a miracle that Atlanta even got this far, considering all the injuries and adversity this team had to deal with in 2024. But it's still a tremendously disappointing finish, especially considering how good this team could've been — and how poorly the stars left standing played across two games in San Diego.

There's plenty of blame to go around when a team crashes out of October, but here are three Braves at the top of the list.

For more news and rumors, check out MLB Insider Robert Murray’s work on The Baseball Insiders podcast, subscribe to The Moonshot, our weekly MLB newsletter, and join the discord to get the inside scoop between now and the MLB offseason

Max Fried

Spencer Strider and Chris Sale were hurt. Spencer Schwellenbach was unavailable. In the end, Max Fried was just about the only Braves pitcher left standing — and rather than put his team on his back, the lefty laid a dud, giving up five runs on eight hits in just two innings of work in what was likely his final start in an Atlanta uniform.

We knew going into this series that the Braves were behind the eight ball a bit, due to both injury and the Monday doubleheader that exhausted its pitching staff. This is the exact sort of spot where you'd expect an ace like Fried to step up, stop the bleeding and keep the season alive, but instead, he threw up arguably his worst outing of the season — and the latest in what has become a pretty long line of postseason clunkers. At this point, it's hard to get too angry at Braves fans who won't mind watching Fried go this winter.

Marcell Ozuna and Matt Olson

Let's just throw these two together, because the logic is the same. In addition to all the pitching injuries outlined above, Atlanta's offense was also a shell of itself by the time October rolled around. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley were out for the year. Ozzie Albies was just coming back from a two-month absence. The three stalwarts remaining were Ozuna, Olson and Michael Harris II, and while Harris showed up to San Diego ready to hit, the other two most certainly did not.

Ozuna and Olson combined to go just 3-for-15 with zero extra-base hits and just one RBI across these two Wild Card games, an unacceptable showing when you consider their importance to this beleaguered Braves lineup. Ozuna put up another monster year overall, but he cooled off considerably when Atlanta needed him most, slugging .383 in September and October. Olson, meanwhile, followed up last year's 54-homer campaign with a far more pedestrian 118 OPS+ in 2024, and Atlanta will need a bounceback year in 2025 from the first baseman it handed a $168 million contract to a couple of years ago.