Atlanta Braves

From Boston to Cobb County

The club began in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings, which makes it the oldest continuously operating professional sports franchise in North America. It moved to Milwaukee in 1953 and to Atlanta in 1966, and it remains the only major league club to have won the World Series in three different cities: Boston in 1914, Milwaukee in 1957, and Atlanta in 1995 and 2021.

The Atlanta era produced the franchise's defining single moment on 8 April 1974, when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's career home-run record at home in front of a national television audience. Two years later Ted Turner bought the club and put its games out nationally on his TBS superstation, which built a following across the south-east that long outran the team's results.

The 2026 campaign marked the 60th season of Braves baseball in Atlanta, and the tenth at a ballpark that is not in Atlanta proper. Truist Park sits in Cumberland, Cobb County, roughly ten miles north-west of downtown, and opened on 14 April 2017 as SunTrust Park before the naming rights transferred in 2020.

The run, the two rings, and Snitker's decade

Fourteen consecutive division titles between 1991 and 2005, under Bobby Cox and behind the rotation of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, produced one championship: 1995. That imbalance is the central fact of the franchise's modern history, and it explains why 2021 landed as heavily as it did.

The ledger now reads 18 National League pennants and 24 division titles — as many as any club since divisional play began in 1969 — including the NL East 19 times in 32 seasons. Brian Snitker's ten years in the dugout accounted for 811 wins, six NL East titles, one wild-card berth and the 2021 title.

A losing season, then a new dugout

The 2025 team finished 76-86 and fourth in the division, out of the postseason for the first time since 2017 and ending a run of seven straight appearances. Snitker, then 69, did not return for 2026; he moved to a senior advisory role in the front office, with a place in the club's hall of fame to follow, and cited a wish to spend more time with his family. Walt Weiss was named manager in November 2025.

The winter was modest rather than transformative. On 19 November the club re-signed the reliever Raisel Iglesias to a one-year deal and acquired the utility infielder Mauricio Dubón from Houston for the shortstop Nick Allen, at a cost of $6.1 million.

Then the roster fell apart before a pitch was thrown. Four starting pitchers — Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach, Hurston Waldrep and Joey Wentz — were injured going into or during spring training. The shortstop Ha-Seong Kim hurt a finger in January, the catcher Sean Murphy was working back from hip surgery, and on 3 March the outfielder Jurickson Profar was suspended for 162 games after testing positive for exogenous testosterone, his second doping violation inside twelve months.

How 2026 was actually won

What followed was a season built out of replacement parts and two very good months from the players who were already there. Dominic Smith hit.338 in April and.310 in May as the designated hitter. Jorge Mateo hit.347 in May. Martín Pérez, picked up off the waiver wire, turned into a dependable rotation starter. Dubón proved the most useful $6.1 million on the payroll.

The core held up where it mattered. Matt Olson played to MVP standard and passed 40 home runs, Michael Harris II had the best season of his career, and Drake Baldwin showed that his 2025 Rookie of the Year campaign was not a one-off. Ronald Acuña Jr. produced a three-week surge late on. Chris Sale pitched his way into the Cy Young conversation, Tyler Mahle arrived at the trade deadline and was immediately the second-best starter on the staff, and a bullpen fronted by Iglesias, with Bryce Elder and Grant Holmes covering innings, ranked among the strongest in the league.

A 25 August win over the Los Angeles Dodgers took the club past its entire 2025 win total. A postseason berth was secured on 18 September against Houston, and the division two days later, on 20 September, with a 4-2 win at Houston: Mike Yastrzemski hit a three-run homer in a four-run sixth, Pérez gave up one run over four and a third innings, and Dylan Dodd struck out the side in the ninth. The champagne in the visiting clubhouse was noticeably louder than it had been for the berth. "I told these guys winning the division is really tough," Weiss said afterwards. "It takes six months to do it."

Where they stand, late September 2026

At 92-64 the Braves hold the third-best record in the National League, six games clear of Philadelphia in the East but behind Milwaukee (99-59) and Los Angeles (97-61). A division title no longer buys a bye: as the number three seed they host the number six seed in a best-of-three Wild Card Series over three straight days from 29 September, all at Truist Park, with Sale lined up for game one and Mahle for game two. The Division Series, if they get there, starts on 3 October.

The likeliest opponent is Philadelphia, which would be the third time the two have met in October. The Phillies won the 2022 and 2023 Division Series, each in four games.

The one number moving the wrong way is the gate. The club is averaging 34,533 a game in 2026, ninth in the major leagues — down from 35,841 in 2025, 37,182 in 2024 and 39,401 in 2023, when the park ran at 95.9 per cent of capacity. A 41,108-seat ballpark that used to sell out on reputation now needs the standings to do some of the work.

Nine innings in Cumberland

Truist Park cost $622 million, with Cobb County borrowing up to $397 million in bonds, and comfortably over $1.1 billion once the $400 million Battery Atlanta development wrapped around it. The field is short down the lines — 335 feet to left, 325 to right, 400 to centre — and the seating bowl is pulled tighter to the action than at most parks of its generation. Beyond centre field a stand of evergreens, boulders and a fountain throws water up to 50 feet on a home run. Monument Garden holds the Hank Aaron statue and 755 bats, one for each home run.

The building's two showpiece dates so far are the record crowd of 43,619 on 17 August 2019 and the All-Star Game on 15 July 2025, its first. The complaints in visitor reviews are consistent and unglamorous: $6.75 for a 20-ounce soda, and long walks from the outer lots that are unlit after dark with no shuttle running.