Atlanta Braves by Marc Normandin

A year ago, the Braves might have been the least watchable team in baseball. Remember when they had fewer wins in Turner Field than the Red Sox? That was the middle of May. It’s still hard to comprehend. It's not that much of a surprise that they're our fifth-place pick.

Since bottoming out, though, they’ve built a watchable team, just in time for the new ballpark. Honestly, considering where they started, that’s almost the most impressive feat in baseball over the last calendar year. They built three-fifths of a watchable rotation in an offseason that was supposed to be devoid of anything resembling a starting pitcher, and the Shelby Miller trade gave them a quarter of a watchable lineup, with the excellent Freddie Freeman in the middle.

They could be good, not just watchable, you know.

The back of the lineup is still a minefield, and it won’t take long to figure out why the 40-somethings and sore-shouldered pitchers came so cheap, because one or two of them will remind you that they’re 40-something or sore shouldered. The Braves have one of the best farm systems in baseball, a stunning collection of depth, and they’re set up for another decade-long run of success. Until that’s all ready, though, there will be a whole lot of Adonis Garcia and Tyler Flowers, and way too much of Matt Kemp clomping around in the outfield.

In a couple years, the Braves will make us hate them again. Until then, we’ll settle for being impressed at how quickly they turned around that historically abysmal roster.

Seriously, give them a quick round of applause. A 110-loss team in an inconvenient new ballpark they didn’t really need would have been a disaster, and that’s what I would have put money on just 11 months ago.