Looking at where the Braves are now (22-29, 10.5 back in NL East, worst record than any AL team except KC, one of the worst records in baseball) and the upcoming month of June, it appears to me that the next few weeks are critical to the 2017 season.
The Braves have series against 3 at Cincy, 4 with Philly, 4 with Mets (including DH), 3 at GNats, 3 with Marlins, 4 with Giants, 3 with Brewers, 3 at Pads, 1 at A's (plus 2 more in July before the 4th). If the Braves can't play that dog schedule and come out of June at the .500 mark going into the 4th of July, then they are easily done for the year.
I expect we will hear a lot of "but we don't have Freddie" blah, blah, blah. The only teams that are on that list with a better than .500 record are the GNats and the Brewers (who everyone believes implodes at any time).
If they do climb back to .500, which would mean going 19-11 to bring them to 41-40 on the year, there will be a lot of chest thumping about how they've turned it around and once Freddie is back they'll make a charge for the playoffs. That would be like doing a 10 minute end zone dance after scoring a TD over a team full of 5 year old blind kids.
This season is done, has been done and frankly was done 2 years ago. All of the "intend to compete" nonsense was hopefully just window dressing by the Johns to try to get fans seated in the new park. Because if they actually believed what they were preaching then we've got big problems.
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