The 1982 Atlanta Braves season was the club's 17th in Atlanta and its 112th overall. They began the season with a modern Major League Baseball record 13-game winning streak and finished with a record of (the best record in the Torre era). The Braves won the National League West for the first time since 1969 but were swept in three games by the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS.
Offseason October 5, 1981: Gaylord Perry was released by the Braves.Gaylord Perry at Baseball-Reference March 23, 1982: Brian Asselstine was released by the Braves.Brian Asselstine at Baseball-Reference
Managerial turnover
In , Bobby Cox and Joe Torre were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as two of the most successful managers of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Cox had won 2,564 regular-season games, five pennants and one World Series over 29 seasons; Torre had won 2,326 games, six pennants and four World Series over his 29-year career. But when the 1981 season ended, both men were dismissed from their managerial positions.
The New York Mets fired Torre on October 5, 1981; the Braves dismissed Cox three days later. Cox, finishing his fourth season during his first tour as Atlanta's manager, was only with one over-.500 season; Torre was in 4 seasons with the Mets. In both and , Cox's Braves and Torre's Mets had each finished in the cellar of their respective National League divisions.
Cox, then 40 years old, was named manager of the American League Toronto Blue Jays—then a struggling expansion team in its fifth year of existence—on October 15, 1981; nine days later, Torre, 41, was announced as Cox's successor in Atlanta, returning to the team where he had become an All-Star catcher during the 1960s.
Torre's Braves won their first 13 regular-season games en route to the National League West Division title, their first since 1969. In three full seasons with the Braves, he went and gained wider recognition as a manager through the Braves' WTBS Superstation. Although a later, 5-year term (1990–1995) with the St. Louis Cardinals was not as successful, Torre would earn his Hall of Fame credentials with a 12-year run (1996–2007) as manager of the New York Yankees, winning six AL championships and four World Series, and compiling a winning percentage of .605.
Cox took a different path. His talented but young 1982 Blue Jays, though still below .500, won more games (78) than ever before in their history. Then they broke through, winning 89 games in both and . Finally, in , they captured 99 victories to win the American League East Division by a two-game margin over the Yankees. The Jays held a three games to one edge in the 1985 American League Championship Series, only to drop three straight games and the AL pennant to the eventual world champion Kansas City Royals.
Ted Turner's Braves, however, were heading in the opposite direction after 1982. He fired Torre after an 1984 season, then fired two more managers, Eddie Haas and Bobby Wine, after they lost a combined 96 games in 1985. Turner turned to yet another manager for , Chuck Tanner, but he also decided to replace his general manager, John Mullen, with a new baseball man: Cox, induced to return to Atlanta for a promotion and a multi-year contract.
Cox would begin to rebuild the Braves from the front office, but the on-field losses continued to mount until Cox finally decided, on June 21, 1990, to return to uniform and the dugout as the team's manager. By 1991, the Braves would be National League champions.
The regular season
The first half of the season The Braves started very hot in 1982, winning their first 13 games (April 6 through April 21) of the season, a new major league record100 Things Braves Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die: Revised and Updated, Jack Wilkinson, Triumph Books, Chicago, 2019, ISBN 978-1-62937-694-3, p.76 (since equaled by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1987 and by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2023). The wins came at the expense of San Diego Padres (two), Houston Astros (six) and Cincinnati Reds (five). The streak began with a 1–0 victory in San Diego in the season opener and came to an end when the Reds edged the Braves 2–1 in Atlanta in the Braves' 14th game.
The Braves lost five straight after their record start and by the end of May they were and struggling. Some critics claimed the Braves were just living off the feat of their 13-game winning streak and that they were not as good as their record showed. Some of the critics even predicted that the Braves would drift slowly out of contention and would be out of the running by mid-summer. However, the Braves warmed up again, and they won 12 of their first 15 games in the month of June to jump to 16 games above the .500 mark at 39 wins and 23 losses. This gave evidence that the Braves's 13–0 start was not just a fluke of luck, and this silenced their critics–at least for a while.
Next, the Braves slowed down again, and they slipped to a record on June 29, but then they reeled off another six-game winning streak to build up a game lead in the National League Western Division on July 5. The Braves split their next four games, and they had a record of on July 9 following a 6–4 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. That meant the Braves were setting pace to win 100 games for the season, which is a traditional mark for a very good team in either league. This was great improvement for a team that had struggled, mostly in the cellar, in 1975 through 1981. On the two days right before the All-Star Game, the Braves lost to the Pirates 6–1 and 3–1, but they were still on the top of the Western Division by two-games in the standings.
Second half
The Braves started the second half of the 1982 season following the All-Star break with five wins versus only one loss in their first six games. This improved the Braves' won-loss record to on July 20. Their lead over the second-place team in the division was then six games. That was the largest lead that a Braves team had ever achieved since the Braves had come to Atlanta for the 1966 season, even surpassing their largest divisional lead of their Western Division championship team of 1969.
However, from July 21 to 25, the Braves endured a small dip. They lost three out of four games, and their offense was atrocious, with their being shut out in all three of the losses: once by the St. Louis Cardinals and twice by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Braves scored a rather-average four runs in the game that they won. Nevertheless, the Braves were 20 games over .500 with a record of . They were also settling in for an 11-game series in their home ballpark, followed by an 11-game road trip, all of which were against foes in the Western Division.
The second-place San Diego Padres played against the Braves in Atlanta Stadium for the first four games. The Padres were followed by the third-place Los Angeles Dodgers for the next four games; and finally the fourth-place San Francisco Giants played three games against the Braves. Next, the Braves were back on the road again for four games with the Dodgers, three more with the Giants, and finally four more games versus the Padres.
The Braves had a five-game lead in the standings when the home series versus the Padres began. The Braves began the series by sweeping a doubleheader against the Padres by 9–2 and 8–6 scores. The Braves repeated this game on the next night with another 8–6 victory. Their lead in the Western Division had increased to a high-water mark of eight games, and the Padres were on their way down and out of second place and out of contention. The Braves' primary stalker for the rest of the season became the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With their 6–2 victory over the Padres on July 29, the Braves completed the four-game sweep, and the Braves' record soared to – the first time since 1969 when the Braves once reached a high-water mark of 25 games over .500. The Braves held a nine-game lead over the Padres (at ), and a game lead over the third-place Dodgers (). The Giants () had nearly fallen out of contention, 14 games behind the Braves, and with a losing record.
This lead of nine games in the standings was the largest lead that the Braves had ever had since they moved to Atlanta for the 1966 season. The Braves' All-Star outfielder Dale Murphy had 11 hits in 16 at-bats in the sweep over the Padres, and for the season, he was batting .308 and leading the National League with 28 home runs and 74 runs batted in (RBI). Their other big bats were those of their third baseman Bob Horner, who was batting .289 with 20 home runs so far, and their first baseman Chris Chambliss, a .259 hitter thus far with 11 homers and 48 RBI. Their only reliable starting pitcher was Phil Niekro (10–3, 3.27 ERA), and their two big guns as relief pitchers were Steve Bedrosian with a 1.46 ERA, and Gene Garber with a 2.16 ERA and 19 saves already. The overall pitching staff had a 3.60 ERA, and the team batting average was .262. The Braves had scored 447 runs so far. Rick Camp, a part-time starter, was 8–4 with a 3.14 ERA
This big lead in the Western Division did not last for long. During that stretch of 21 games against just the Dodgers, the Giants, the Padres, and the Montreal Expos, the Braves seemed to be moving in slow motion both on the pitcher's mound and in the batting boxes as they slumped badly and lost 19 out of 21 games – including an 11-game losing steak and four-game losing streaks twice.
The Dodgers, under their long-time manager Tommy Lasorda, had turned both hot and lucky at the same time. Eight out of those 19 losses during this frantic nose-dive by the Braves were to the Dodgers, who swept the Braves 4–0 in two series against them in a 10-day period. The Braves' wins and losses during these 21 games were against the Dodgers (0–8), the Giants (1–5), the Padres (1–3), and the Expos (0–3).
On August 18, the Braves lost their third game in a row to the Expos, completing another four-game losing streak, and their won-loss record had fallen to . In so doing, they had fallen into second place in the Western Division, four games behind the Dodgers, who had moved into first place by winning 16 out of 20 games. The Braves seemed to be on track to lose the Western Division for the 13th year in a row, and miss the post-season once again. The Braves had not won a playoff series since they won the World Series in 1957, and they had played in few playoff games since then (seven vs. the New York Yankees in 1958, two vs. the Dodgers in 1959, and three vs. the New York Mets in 1969 – and losing nine of those games).
However, the Braves righted themselves as a team, and their clouds of bad luck seemed to part. Beginning on August 19 with a win over the Expos in the last game of the series with them, the Braves roared back into first place by winning 13 out of 15 games while the Dodgers played ordinary baseball.
On September 3, the Braves' won-loss record had improved to ; they were ahead of the Dodgers by games. However, their travails were not over, as they once again lost four games in a row and fell back into second place behind the Dodgers. Now, it was time for head-to-head competition with the Dodgers again. The Braves defeated the Dodgers in two consecutive games, on September 8 and 9, to once again move into first place (with a record) by games over the Dodgers.
There was more hardship to come. The Braves lost eight out of 12 games, including six losses to a different nemesis this time, the Houston Astros. This dropped the Braves back into second place, a full three games behind the Dodgers on September 22.