By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

It’s been half a decade, but the Braves are going to the playoffs again.

It is an exciting and frankly unexpected development in the Braves franchise in 2018, coming at least one but probably two years before the earliest anyone could have expected a division title.

Let’s take a quick look back at how they managed to end up on the top of the heap and briefly look ahead to the playoffs.

So, the Braves weren’t expected to make the playoffs in 2018. They weren’t really expected to compete for a spot.

So, does that mean that they lucked into a division title? Is their spot on top a fluke? Not at all.

Players like Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna, Jr. took steps as players, Freddie Freeman and Nick Markakis stayed consistent and stayed healthy and the starting rotation, anchored by Mike Foltynewicz and Anibal Sanchez of all people, put in enough quality innings to help out a fairly poor bullpen.

This team is talented enough to belong where they are, make no mistake. To give credit where it’s due, it certainly didn’t hurt that both the New York Mets and the Washington Nationals, the two teams people actually thought would be at the top of the heap in 2018, were busts from nearly Opening Day.

The Mets in particular were lost causes early on but people kept expecting the favorite Nationals to wake up and make a run, at which point the Braves and Phillies would fall back to their natural places in the middle of the pack.

But that never happened and the NL East has been all about Atlanta and Philadelphia throughout the year.

So yes, Atlanta took advantage of a top spot that was vacated by the Nats, but the team they fielded still deserves to pop champagne, at least once.

On that note, let’s look ahead to what the playoffs might look like for Atlanta.

At this point it’s pretty clear that Chicago will have the best record in the NL, which means that they’ll take on the winner of the Wild Card Game, leaving the NL West Champs to face the Braves.

That’s clearly going to be either the Los Angeles Dodgers or the Colorado Rockies. Both teams offer big challenges and the Braves played neither particularly well, going 2-5 against each club in 2018, including an ugly four game sweep at Suntrust Park at the hands of Colorado in August.

There may be a psychological benefit to playing a smaller market team like the Rockies to start off the playoffs but there would also be a measure of sweet revenge if the Braves could face Los Angeles, the team that knocked them out in the first round in 2013 (though only Freeman and Julio Teheran remain on the roster from that season).

Either way, it will be a huge challenge for the Braves to win their first playoff series since 2001. Whatever happens, Atlanta should be proud of what they accomplished this season – not just that they won the NL East, but that they DESERVED to win the NL East.

They hit, pitched, caught and had the kind of no-quit, gritty attitude that hasn’t been seen in Atlanta since the scrappy and resilient team that led Bobby Cox back to the playoffs one last time in 2010.

They’ve been incredibly fun to watch play and now we’ll get to watch them play just a little bit longer.