The Best Atlanta Braves Seasons and Every October Run

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 12 min read

A season-by-season walk through the Braves' best records and every postseason series in the historical record, from the 1890s Boston champions to the 2021 title and the recent early exits.

The Atlanta Braves have won four World Series and eighteen pennants, and they have lost far more October series than they have won. Since divisional play began in 1969, the historical record lists 41 postseason series for the franchise: 17 won and 24 lost. That ratio is the odd feature of the club's history. For fifteen years the Braves were the most reliable regular-season team in the National League, and in that stretch they won exactly one championship.

This article sorts the franchise's best seasons by era and records every postseason series in the database, including the near-misses that fans remember better than the parades. The records come from the historical record through the 2025 season. Where an event is not in the numbers, the article sticks to well-documented history and leaves out anything it cannot verify.

The club's life runs through three cities: Boston (1876 to 1952), Milwaukee (1953 to 1965) and Atlanta (1966 onward), with the modern peak under managers Bobby Cox and then Brian Snitker. The full franchise story covers the people and the moves. This one is about the winning.

The Boston champions of the 1890s

The oldest part of the record is the most successful by winning percentage. The historical record lists the club's league pennants in 1877, 1878, 1883, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1897 and 1898, all before the modern World Series existed. The best seasons by winning percentage among seasons of 100 or more games all come from this era, with one exception.

The 1898 club won 102 games and the 1892 club won 102. Frank Selee managed the team from 1890 to 1901, and his record with it was 1,004 wins and 649 losses, the second-best total of wins in franchise history behind Bobby Cox. The roster behind that winning included pitcher Kid Nichols, whose 330 wins for the franchise rank second to Warren Spahn's 356, and outfielder Hugh Duffy, whose .332 career average is the club's best among players with 3,000 at-bats.

The 1892 team also appears in the postseason table, because the National League split that season into two halves and had the half-season winners meet. Boston, which won the first half, beat the second-half winner Cleveland in the championship series, recorded as 5-0 in the database. It is the club's only series win before 1914, and a reminder that the pennant, not a World Series, was the prize for most of the 1800s.

Those early clubs played in the South End Grounds, which the database lists in three versions between 1876 and 1914, with a best season attendance of 382,913.

Miracle 1914 and the long Boston drought

The first World Series title came in 1914, and the way it arrived is among the best-known stories of the sport. The club was in last place in the National League in early July, finished 94-59 and won the pennant, and then swept the Philadelphia Athletics 4-0. The franchise now called the Athletics is the same one that lost that Series. George Stallings, who managed Boston from 1913 to 1920, got the credit, and second baseman Johnny Evers was named the league's Most Valuable Player that year.

That title was the high point of a bleak stretch. The club did not win another pennant for 34 years, and several of the worst seasons in the franchise record come from this period. The historical record lists these as the five lowest winning percentages:

The 1935 team, at 38-115, is the worst record in the franchise history by a wide margin. The club bounced through name changes in those decades (Doves, Rustlers, Braves, Bees, then Braves again), and the standings rarely rewarded it. Casey Stengel managed it from 1938 to 1943 with a record of 373-491, and Bill McKechnie managed it from 1930 to 1937 with a record of 560-666. These are not the achievements the franchise remembers.

1948 and the Milwaukee years

The drought ended in 1948. Billy Southworth's club won 91 games, lost 62, and won the pennant, with Al Dark winning Rookie of the Year and Bob Elliott having been named the league's Most Valuable Player the previous year. The staff leaned so heavily on Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain that a rhyme about the two aces and rain became part of the sport's folklore, but the record is plain: the club lost the World Series to Cleveland, two games to four, and left Boston without another title.

The club moved to Milwaukee for 1953, and the results arrived quickly. The Milwaukee Braves of 1953 to 1965 drew crowds that were then large, with a season high of 2,215,404 at County Stadium. They are also the club that two Hall of Famers, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews, led. Aaron hit 733 home runs for the franchise, the most in club history, and Mathews hit 493.

The 1957 title was the franchise's second, and the only one won in Milwaukee. Aaron was named Most Valuable Player that season and Spahn won the Cy Young Award, and Lew Burdette's three complete-game wins against the Yankees in the Series became the defining feature of it. A year later the same two clubs met again and this time the Yankees won in seven games, after the Braves had led the Series three games to one. The Braves left Milwaukee after 1965 and arrived in Atlanta in 1966, 13 seasons after the move from Boston.

The first Atlanta years: 1969 to 1990

The Atlanta Braves' first division title came in 1969, the first year of divisional play. The club won 93 games, lost 69 and took the new National League West, but the new National League Championship Series was a sweep for the New York Mets, 3-0. That is the pattern of the 1969 to 1990 period: a handful of good teams and almost no wins in October.

The 1982 club won the West at 89-73 and lost the NLCS to St. Louis in three games. It was led by Dale Murphy, who was named Most Valuable Player that year and again in 1983, and it opened the season with 13 straight wins. Murphy finished with 371 home runs for the franchise, fourth in club history behind Aaron, Mathews and Chipper Jones.

The next several years were dismal. The club sank to 65-97 in 1990 and finished last in the division, and Bobby Cox, who had managed the team from 1978 and later moved to the front office, took the dugout back during that season. His record with the franchise across all his years was 2,142-1,707 over 3,851 games, the most games by any manager in club history. Nobody could have guessed what came next.

Worst to first and the great run, 1991 to 2005

In 1991, the Braves won 94 games, a gain of 29 over the previous year, and won the division. They went on to beat Pittsburgh in seven games in the NLCS and then lost the World Series to Minnesota in seven games, with the last game decided 1-0 in ten innings. Terry Pendleton was named Most Valuable Player and Tom Glavine the Cy Young Award winner.

The division titles then came in a row: 1991, 1992 and 1993, then 1995 through 2005, fourteen in all, with the 1994 strike season having no postseason and no champions. The 1991 to 2005 stretch is the record that belongs in any list of the best runs in baseball history.

The 1992 NLCS is the best-known comeback in club history. Pittsburgh led Game 7 by 2-0 going to the bottom of the ninth, and Francisco Cabrera's two-out single scored Sid Bream with the winning run. Toronto then won the World Series in six games. In 1993 the club won 104 games and the 1993 attendance, 3,884,720, remains the highest in franchise history. They lost to Philadelphia in the NLCS in six games.

The Braves in those years had the three pitchers who explain the run: Greg Maddux, who won the Cy Young Award in 1993, 1994 and 1995 after joining the club, Tom Glavine, who won it in 1991 and 1998, and John Smoltz, who won it in 1996. Between them they supplied 244 wins (Glavine), 210 (Smoltz) and 194 (Maddux) for the club. The hitters were Chipper Jones, who won the Most Valuable Player Award in 1999, and Andruw Jones.

The 1995 title and the 1996 collapse

Only one of those fourteen teams won it all. The 1995 club, in a season shortened to 144 games by the strike, won the division at 90-54, beat Colorado 3-1, swept Cincinnati 4-0 and beat Cleveland 4-2 in the World Series. Glavine pitched eight innings of one-hit ball in the clinching Game 6, a 1-0 victory. The game remains the signature performance of the franchise's best pitching era.

In 1996 the Braves went 96-66, swept the Dodgers and beat the Cardinals in seven games after trailing 3-1, and then lost the World Series to the Yankees 2-4. They won the first two games at Yankee Stadium, with 19-year-old Andruw Jones homering twice in Game 1, and then lost four in a row. In Game 4 the club led by three runs in the eighth inning and lost in extra innings.

The 1998 club is the one fans recall as the best team that did not win. It won 106 games, the most in franchise history in the modern era and the best winning percentage in the database among modern seasons, and then lost to San Diego 4-2 in the NLCS. The 1999 team won 103 games, beat the Mets in an NLCS that ended with Andruw Jones drawing a bases-loaded walk in the 11th inning of Game 6, and then was swept by the Yankees.

Why the early exits kept happening

From 2000 to 2005 the club lost its first series five times in six years, and three of those went the full five games. The sample is small enough to be mostly luck: a five-game series between teams of similar quality is close to a coin flip, and the Braves built their teams for the 162-game season around deep starting pitching, which matters less in a short series with off days than it does over a summer. Houston ended the Braves' seasons in 2004 and 2005, and the 2005 series included an 18-inning Game 4.

The relevant arithmetic is simple. If a better team has a 60 percent chance to win each game, it wins a five-game series about 68 percent of the time and a seven-game series about 71 percent of the time. A team that makes the playoffs 14 times and is the better club in nearly every series will still lose a good share of them. None of that excuses the results, and it does not prove they were unlucky, but it explains why a 106-win team can lose to a 98-win team without anyone having done anything wrong. The history of the World Series covers how the format has changed.

The opponents who beat them were not always the stronger teams on paper. The Phillies beat the Braves in the 1993 NLCS and again in the 2022 and 2023 division series. The Florida Marlins beat them in the 1997 NLCS as a wild card, and the Marlins franchise went on to win that World Series. The Braves' own wins over the Mets in the 1999 NLCS were the other side of the same coin.

Rebuilding and the playoff return, 2006 to 2019

After 2005 the division streak ended, and the next several years were close but incomplete. The club made the wild-card game or round in 2010, 2012 and 2024, and the division title in 2013, 2018 and 2019. The 2010 team, Bobby Cox's last, went 91-71, finished second, took the wild card, and lost the division series to San Francisco, one game to three. Cox retired after 2010 with the most games managed in club history.

The 2012 wild-card game against St. Louis ended 6-3 for the Cardinals and is remembered for a disputed infield fly call. Chipper Jones also retired after that season, with 468 home runs, 2,726 hits and 1,512 walks for the franchise. The next seasons were hard: the club lost 95 games in 2015, 93 in 2016 and 90 in 2017 in the process of rebuilding.

The rebuild produced the next peak. The 2018 club was 90-72 under Brian Snitker and won the division, and Ronald Acuña was named Rookie of the Year. It lost the division series 3-1 to the Dodgers. In 2019 the club won 97 games and lost in five to St. Louis, in a Game 5 in which the Cardinals scored ten runs in the first inning.

2020 and 2021: the second parade

The 2020 season was 60 games long, with no fans in the park and an expanded postseason. The Braves went 35-25, beat Cincinnati 2-0 in the wild-card round and Miami 3-0 in the division series, and then led the Dodgers three games to one in the NLCS before losing 4-3. Freddie Freeman was named Most Valuable Player that year.

The 2021 team did what the 2000s teams did not. It went 88-73, a modest record for a champion, and won the division in a year in which Ronald Acuña's season ended with a knee injury in July. The club beat Milwaukee 3-1, beat the Dodgers 4-2 in the NLCS and beat Houston 4-2 in the World Series. It was the franchise's fourth title, 26 years after the last. The ballpark was called SunTrust Park through 2019 and has been Truist Park since 2020, and the Truist Park guide describes it.

The latest run: 2022 to 2025

The 2022 and 2023 clubs won more games than the 2021 champions and lost their division series to Philadelphia both times, one game to three. The 2022 team won 101 games. The 2023 team won 104, matching the franchise's 1993 total, and scored 947 runs, the most by the franchise in any season since the 1890s, when scoring was far higher. Acuña was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 2023.

In 2024 the club went 89-73, finished second to the Phillies, and lost the wild-card series 0-2 to San Diego. Chris Sale, acquired from Boston, won the Cy Young Award. In 2025 the team fell to 76-86 and fourth place, its first losing season since 2017, and missed the postseason. Drake Baldwin was named Rookie of the Year.

What the whole record says

Counting every era, the Braves have won four World Series, lost six, and won 18 pennants including the 1800s ones. Their overall record through 2025 was 11,190-11,035, a .503 winning percentage over 150 seasons. They have changed cities twice, and they have been the best team in the league several times without being the champion.

Common questions

Which Braves team was the best? By winning percentage among modern seasons the 1998 team at 106-56, but it lost the NLCS. The 1957 club won the title at 95-59 and the 1995 club won it in a shortened year. The 1890s Boston clubs had the best percentages of all, though the competition and the game were different.

How many World Series have the Braves won? Four: 1914 as Boston, 1957 as Milwaukee, and 1995 and 2021 as Atlanta.

Did the Braves really win 14 straight division titles? The record shows division titles in 1991, 1992, 1993 and then every year from 1995 to 2005. The 1994 season ended in a strike, with no champions, so the streak is usually described as 14 straight titles rather than 15 seasons.

Who managed the most games? Bobby Cox, with 3,851 games and a 2,142-1,707 record from 1978 to 2010. Brian Snitker is third in games, with 811 wins and 668 losses from 2016 to 2025, and Frank Selee is second, with 1,004 wins in the 1890s.

Why did the Braves lose so many playoff series? Short series are close to random, and the Braves faced strong opponents. They also lost to the eventual champion several times, among them the 1997 Marlins and, in the 1996 and 1999 World Series, the Yankees.

Where to go next

For the current record and schedule, see the Braves team page and the Truist Park page. The Braves topic page collects news, and the best players in club history profiles the people behind these seasons.