The Atlanta Braves season of milestones is collecting into one large boulder, collecting momentum, and rolling the competition.
From a league-best won-lost record to a record home run pace to the ascension to a franchise win total to the acknowledgment of team all-time greats, the season is particular indeed.
Winning Time
The Crucial Third
There is a baseball adage that states a team wins one-third of its games and loses one-third, but it is what is done with the final third that makes a difference.
With a league-best record of 81-44 on the season and a .648 winning percentage, the Braves are close to winning all those third “third” games.
More and More Home Runs
On August 22, Eddie Rosario hit a two-run home run, his 20th of the season, which keyed a 3-2 win over the New York Mets.
By doing so, the Braves have seven players who have hit 20-plus homers in a season. They have done so through 125 games, the fastest pace for a team to reach the seven-player, 20-homer level in a season.
The record for 20-homer players in a season is eight, by the 2019 Minnesota Twins.
Rosario became the seventh Brave to reach the 20th home run mark, joining Matt Olson (43), Austin Riley (29), Ronald Acuña Jr. (28),
Ozzie Albies (28), Marcell Ozuna (26) and Sean Murphy (20). The 2021 Blue Jays were the most recent team, with seven players reaching 20 home runs.
The Braves’ bigger picture is that of breaking the single-season team home run record. Their 239 home runs lead MLB by a wide margin. The Los Angeles Dodgers are second with 195 homers.
The 2019 Twins above set the record with 309.
Win No. 11,000
On August 18, 2023, the Braves won their 11,000th game. The franchise is only the 4th team in professional baseball history to pass the milestone.
As of that date, the San Francisco Giants are the all-time winningest MLB team with 11,445, followed by the Los Angeles Dodgers (11,305), Chicago Cubs (11,222), and the St. Louis Cardinals (11,183).
The New York Yankees have MLB’s all-time best winning percentage, sitting at .570, but sit in 8th place with 10,662 victories due to the American League (1901) being founded 25 years after the National League (1876).
Braves Hall of Famers
The team inducted Rico Carty and Fred Tenney into the Braves Hall of Fame on August 19. The ceremony was part of the Braves Alumni Weekend starting August 18 with a “Braves Legends Parade” through the Battery.
Rico Carty, now 83, was with the club from 1963 to 1972 and was one of the best hitters in the franchise’s history. He had a career batting average of .317 with Atlanta and holds the highest WAR of any left fielder in team history. Carty’s lone All-Star selection came in 1970 when he finished with a .366 batting average. He also finished 10th in MVP voting that season.
Fred Tenney played for the Boston Braves from 1894 to 1907. In franchise record books, he ranks fifth in runs (1,134), fourth in hits (1,994), and fifth in stolen bases (260). Tenney doubled as a manager and a player from 1905-1907. Tenney died in 1952 at the age of 80.
Main Photo Credits: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
