Braves 2021 season preview Projected lin

For the most part, the 2020 season was damn good for the . They won the NL East for the third straight season, they had the league MVP and the league home run and RBI champ and neither of those guys is actually their brightest star. They swept through the first two rounds of the playoffs, winning all five games, and took a 3-1 lead in the NLCS.They also blew that 3-1 NLCS lead and failed to make the World Series. Again. Also on the negative side, they lost their ace to a major injury during his third start.Still, it was mostly a succe sful 2020 season for the Braves and they now look to keep things going as they head to 2021 in what looks to be a very tough division.Let's preview the upcoming season for these Atlanta Braves.2021 SportsLine projection: 92-70World Series odds (via William Hill Sportsbook):+10002020 Record: 35-25 (won NL East; lost in NLCS to ) , RF , 2B , 1B , LF , C , SS , 3BChristian Pache, CFBench:C Alex Jackson, 1B/3B , IF , OF Youngster could factor behind the plate at some point. Veteran infielders and are non-roster invitees to camp while and are with the outfielders. Also, is in the organization, which means a fun pinch-runner come September and po sibly in October, too. We'll discu s the lineup more in a bit, but it looks Craig Reynolds Jersey pretty imposing.LHP RHP RHP LHP RHP Bullpen: CL , SU , SU A.J. Minter, SU , MID , MID , MID , MID , LONG The return of from his torn Achilles looms and he immediately shoots toward the top of the rotation. There are also lots of starting pitching depth with youngsters like , , , and more. Non-roster invitees in camp include former names like and .It remains to be seen how it works out with Smith closing, but their major bullpen i sues should be a thing of the past as Martin, Minter and Matzek were all outstanding last season. Dayton was good, too, but the main point John Penisini Jersey is the late innings really shouldn't be too worrisome. The Braves' offense last season was a wrecking crew. They led the NL in hits, doubles, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS and total bases. They were second in runs, home runs and batting average. They return mostly the same group, though there are both questions and reasons to believe they could be even better.Ozuna was ridiculous last season, damn near winning the triple crown. He slashed .338/.431/.636 (175 OPS+) while leading the NL in homers and RBI. It was only 60 games, though, and he was streaky, torching pitchers to the tune of .383/.472/.714 in his last 39 games after a .243/.345/.473 start. Also, here are his OPS+, by season, since becoming a full-time player: 114, 92, 110, 149, 106, 109, 175. It's reasonable to believe a full year of Ozuna in 2021 is much more closely aligned to the above-average hitter he's been in years past than the Prime Hank Aaron impre sion he did in 2020. Also, how will he fare on defense now without the universal DH?Riley looked like a star upon arrival in 2019, hitting .324 with nine homers and 25 RBI through his first 18 career games. Since then we've only seen flashes of good and his career line through 131 games is .232/.288/.448 with 157 strikeouts against just 32 walks. There were some good trends last year. He lowered his strikeout rate, increased his walk rate and hit the ball harder. Heading to his age-24 season in what should be his first full season with the third base job locked down, it's po sible this is a breakout season for him. It's also po sible he flops and they're forced to turn to Jake Lamb. Lamb hasn't been good since some point in 2017, however, save for his 13-game stretch with the A's last season. Again, third base could be a bright spot for the Braves if Riley breaks out, but it could also be an i sue.d'Arnaud hadn't been a productive hitter since 2015, really, other than an encouraging partial season with the in 2019. In 44 games last season, he hit .321/.386/.533 and won the Silver Slugger. Has he truly turned the corner and become an offensive force of a catcher? It's po Taylor Decker Jersey sible, but it's also po sible he's a liability with the bat.Was the Swanson breakout real? He came into the season a career .245 hitter with an 84 OPS+. Last year, he hit .274/.345/.464, an excellent line for a hitter from the latter part of the order. Maybe it was his breakthrough at age 26. It's always po sible he regre ses back to below average, though. How will Pache hit in a full big-league season? In 133 career Double-A games, he's a .274/.331/.446 hitter. He's Aidan Hutchinson Jersey only played in 26 Triple-A games and 14 in the majors, including the playoffs. He didn't hit big-league pitching well.Still, it's po sible much of the above turns out well and the Braves actually hit better than last year.Ozzie Albies is still only 24 years old and had a down 2020 season in only 29 of the 60 games. He lost 24 points in batting average and 79 in OPS, again, while mi sing more than half the abbreviated season. There's plenty of room for him to get even better than he was in 2019. Then there's the top draw on the team in Mr. Acuna. He mi sed 14 games in 2020 and lost 30 points of batting average. His power and patience were greatly improved, though, and if he puts everything together he's going to win MVP. Heading to his age-23 season, don't sleep on how good he could be.Someone who doesn't require much discu sion is reigning MVP Freeman. From 2013-20, he has hit .302/.394/.526 (146 OPS+) with 162-game averages of 42 doubles, 30 homers, 104 RBI and 104 runs. Heading to his age-31 season, there's very little reason to think he's slowing down just yet.The Braves could Daryl Worley Jersey well be the best offense in baseball. There are also enough questions to believe they could end up settling more in the top-10 range than in the discu sion for the best. The biggest question right now is what they'll get out of Soroka. He's already worked his way up to throwing simulated games, but opening day is around eight months since he had surgery to repair a torn Achilles and the timeline for a return is generally nine months to a year. Once he's full go with the heel/ankle area, the attention turns to the arm of the talented 23-year-old. How will it hold up after the 2020 spring ramp up, COVID shutdown, ramp back up and then shut down due to the leg injury? His workload had already jumped a ton from 2018 to 2019.Speaking of those young arms, how will the Braves navigate the workloads of Anderson, Wright and even Bryse Wilson? Anderson threw 135 2/3 regular-season innings in 2019 between Double-A and Triple-A. He worked 50 innings last year between the regular season and playoffs. Can he really take a full 32-33 turns in the rotation this year? Wright has yet to prove he can stick in the rotation, performance-wise, but even if he does he'll have similar workload concerns. Ditto for Wilson.Even Fried has a career-high of just 165 2/3 innings (2019) and went backward to 79 2/3 last year, i