By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Can a season be considered a success if the team finishes last in its division? How do you judge a year that was set up to be a failure in terms of win-loss record?

These are the kinds of questions Braves fans will ask as the season winds down and the baseball world looks towards the offseason and towards 2017.

Atlanta was going to be bad, we knew that all along; but we had a lot to watch: we had a huge stock of young pitchers, a pair of highly rated shortstops making their way up through the minors, a handful of trade pieces to use throughout the year, and a few players on the Major League roster who were going to produce enough not to embarrass fans in Braves Country.

There were successes and failure for nearly each of these areas of interest.

The young pitching the Braves had been building for years was a point of great excitement going into 2016. No one expected these young players to be lights out right off the bat, but there were tons of highly-rated arms the Braves had acquired, and they would start showing up.

Many did indeed show up on the big club’s roster, but there were more struggles than Braves fans would have hoped. Aaron Blair, for instance, was considered to be as ready to make the leap to the majors as any prospect in the system, but he faltered in his performance for Atlanta and couldn’t keep from being sent back down to the minors.

Tyrell Jenkins had similar struggles, with occasional flashes of brilliance. Matt Wisler, who had impressed in 2015, got lit up more than expected. On the other hand, Mike Foltynewicz was a bright spot, turning in not a great season, but one with promise – and he took a massive step forward from what we saw out of him the previous year.

The minor leagues were full of varying successes from young pitchers – three of the Braves’ farm teams made the championship series based largely on pitching, with Single A Rome taking home a championship on their stellar arms. Those arms are still a ways away, but again there is promise.

The two shortstops, Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies, were inconsistent with their bats through their many stops in the minors in 2016, but growing pains are expected.

Swanson (2015’s number one overall draft pick, thanks Arizona) broke into the Majors after the trade of Erick Aybar and has played very well during his first two months. Albies, who was expected to join the club as rosters expanded, was unfortunately injured and won’t be making his MLB debut this year.

The Braves’ front office continues to wheel and deal, though perhaps with less headline attention – with the exception of adding Matt Kemp in exchange of a PR nightmare in the person of Hector Olivera.

By merely tacking on an additional $8 million to the payroll, Atlanta found a right-handed cleanup hitter who, while certainly not the player he was in 2011, has managed to light a fire in the offense – including the always fun stat that more than half of his homeruns as a Brave has either tied the game or put the Braves ahead.

That offense was certainly on its way to being disappointing, but Ender Inciarte came back from the All-Star Break breathing fire, and Freddie Freeman heated up to the point where he’s clubbed 30 homeruns for the first time. Adonis Garcia floundered early but turned in another solid campaign, and Nick Markakis has driven in more runs than anyone on the team (not counting Kemp).

This was an ugly team to watch for a long time this year; the pitching still needs a ton of work, but the offense, as was promised, did turn out to be an improvement upon last year’s.

The losses have piled up, but the team won their seventh game in a row just before I wrote this. The end of the year is a great time to start to look good – because next season will be here before you know it.