The Importance of Divisional Play

by abraves257 on Mar 19, 2026 5:54 AM EDT

Hey there, hope everyone is recovering well from St. Patrick's Day. I was thinking about how we always talk about how the Braves struggle in divisional play compared to the Phillies and that teams they manhandle we can't seem to ever beat. Well I did some very basic research on this for the past decade, and found that there is a very noticeable trend involved. Now I tried uploading to Google Docs but it looked like garbage, so I uploaded screen shots. Take a look and give some feedback!

Go Braves!

http://imgur.com/a/AO4jX

This FanPost does not express the views or opinions of Talking Chop.

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The big thing I noticed is that while yes they do take care of Washington while we do mediocre, there is not one year in which we beat the Phillies more than we beat any other team in the division. We can’t succeed until we can beat them head to head.

You shouldn’t sip liquor.
-justincredubil02

no, Jack Daniel is whiskey.
-ChopMaster

"Welcome to the show, Brandon Beachy. I think you’re going to stay a while."

by abraves257 on Mar 19, 2026 5:58 AM EDT reply actions

My thought:

These charts tell an incomplete story, because they only look at intra-division success without any context. Overall, a team’s success (i.e., winning percentage) can be broken down into two components relevant here: intra-division success, and success in all other games.

If the trend seems to be that the team with the better “other games” record also has the better division record, then all that’s really being said is that it’s essentially a better team. That result isn’t too interesting. However, if what we end up seeing is that the Braves have been better in “other games” but the Phillies continue to have the divisional edge, then we can really say that Atlanta’s inability to beat up on the NL East like the Phillies do is one of the reasons for it falling short in recent years.

I think some ratios would be interesting indicators: (wins out of division) / (wins in division) would be a fun metric—if they diverged widely over time, you could maybe see where a team’s fortunes turned around.

by Ivan the Great on Mar 19, 2026 8:57 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs

I think the most intersting thing about these numbers

is the fact of how steady philly has been over the last 10 years in division play. Give or take a few games, they consistently win inside the division. Even with their super rotation last year, their actual number of wins inside the division did not change much.
Also, I know we went into decline in 2004, but I never really realized the dip in division wins for the braves in the 08 season.

by dcbravesfn on Mar 19, 2026 6:22 PM EDT reply actions

Unheralded consistency from them. Since 2005, 44.4% of games have been divisional play, and I calculated what percentage of the total wins from the season were from within the division. For the Braves, those numbers have been
46.7%
44.3%
46.4%
43.1%
47.7%
41.8%
40.4%

Very inconsistent, going over the 44.4% only three times. Here are Philly’s:
43.2%
48.2%
47.2%
44.6%
47.3%
45.4%
42.2%

Except for last year, they had over 44.4% of their wins come from inside the division virtually every year.

You shouldn’t sip liquor.
-justincredubil02

no, Jack Daniel is whiskey.
-ChopMaster

"Welcome to the show, Brandon Beachy. I think you’re going to stay a while."

by abraves257 on Mar 19, 2026 9:44 PM EDT up reply actions