The Braves are very bad, but they’re finally winning games

It’s been a downright terrible start to the season for the Atlanta Braves and their fans. They kicked off their 2016 campaign by losing nine straight games, and they were outscored 55-24 by their opponents in that period.

They came within one game of tying the franchise record for worst start, which was set with an 0-10 record back in 1988.

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The Braves being bad wasn’t unexpected. They’re in the thick of a massive teardown and rebuild, and they’ve traded away many franchise players (like Jason Heyward and Justin Upton) in exchange for prospects and minor leaguers they can develop. That can make for a bright future, but a pretty dismal present. But no one expected the present to be quite this dismal right out the gate.

To lose that many games in a row, everything has to be going wrong, and it is. Their team batting average is .215, which is bad enough for 28th out of 30 teams. And their starting pitcher ERA is 5.22, which also ranks at 28th in all of baseball.

Julio Teheran will try to make a dent in the rotation’s high ERA on Wednesday when he and the Braves take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in Yahoo Sports’ MLB Free Game of the Day. The action starts at 7:10 p.m. ET, and you can stream the game at Yahoo’s Sports Home, MLB index and video home.

The Braves are even doing terribly as a publicly traded stock. They officially entered the stock market on Monday morning, opening at $36 a share. By the time the closing bell rang, the stock was down more than 44% from its opening price, finishing the day at $19.95. Tuesday’s trading brought the stock down another 9.5%. It’s not hard to see that as reflective of how the team itself has been doing.

[Elsewhere: Jeffrey Loria gives Dee Gordon some serious bling for batting title]

But the gray clouds of bad baseball have started to break. The Braves have won four straight games, which prevented them from tying that embarrassing franchise record. They swept the similarly woeful Miami Marlins over the weekend, and opened their series with the Dodgers on Tuesday night in fantastic fashion, finding their offense and beating Los Angeles 8-1. That win was also their very first home win of 2016.

The Braves’ highly ranked minor league system is starting to show some life as well. Right-handed pitcher Aaron Blair, who was part of the Shelby Miller-Dansby Swanson trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks, pitched seven no-hit innings for the Triple-A Gwinnett Braves on Tuesday night, and racked up 10 strikeouts.

So things are looking up ever so slightly for the Braves. Now they only have to win another 51 games to avoid tying the 1988 Braves’ 54-106 record.

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