Before I really get started with delving into what’s been going on with the Atlanta Braves recently, it’s important to keep some sort of context going here. In the National League right now, there are only four (4) teams over .500 at the moment and the Braves are one of them. I’d say it’s highly unlikely that the Braves are going to join all the other teams in the under .500 club and assuming they right the ship at some point, they should remain one of the top teams in the National League this season going forward. They may have an extremely tall task ahead of them when it comes to catching the Phillies and winning the division yet again but this is a team that should still be a factor in October once the smoke has cleared on this season.
With that being said, good grief! This is some ugly baseball that we’re seeing from the Braves right now. There’s really no sugarcoating it — they’ve been struggling and struggling mightily in recent weeks. They’ve had 16 games against the Pirates, Nationals, A’s, Red Sox and Nationals again and went 6-10 in that stretch — including 2-6 against Washington. Woof! This is the type of stretch that really cancels out any argument about the Phillies and their strength of schedule because Philadelphia was going through teams of this caliber like a hot knife through butter. Instead, the Braves have been fighting for their life in this stretch and it’s truly been very frustrating to witness.
I’m not going to beat around the bush as to what the main issue is, here: It’s the offense. Plain and simple, the lineup has not been getting the job done at all. It would be one thing if there was just a slight drop-off compared to what they were doing last season — a “slight drop-off” would still have them among baseball’s top offenses. Instead, what’s been going on has been a precipitous decline and it’s to the point now where it’s a little bit concerning even if there’s still plenty of baseball left to be played this season.
We’re going to use May 1 as the line of demarcation here and ever since that date, the Braves have hit .224/.287/.373 as a team, with a collective wOBA of .291, an Isolated Power number of .149 and a team wRC+ of 87. Eighty-seven! For this group! That wRC+ number is good for third-worst in the National League since May 1 and is only five points ahead of the White Sox (who went on a franchise-worst 14-game losing streak during this period) and the Rockies (who are the Rockies). Those are two teams that you never really want to be compared to nowadays and for the past month or so, the Atlanta Braves have only been hitting slightly better than those two teams. That’s really bad!
Only four qualified hitters on the Braves have had a wRC+ over 100 since May 1: Marcell Ozuna carrying the team at 164, Matt Olson starting to wake up at 123, Jarred Kelenic plugging along at 103 and Ronald Acuña Jr. was sitting on a wRC+ of 115 since May 1 before he suffered his season-ending injury. So essentially, only 1⁄3 of Atlanta's lineup has been somewhat reliable since the aforementioned date. Everybody else has been scuffling mightily since then. Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II's struggles have been especially rough since they've been the two who have been filling in at the top of the lineup since Acuña's injury. A .276 wOBA and a 76 wRC+ since May 1 definitely won't cut it for Albies and a .234 wOBA and a 47 wRC+ during that span absolutely won't get the job done, either.
Michael Harris II's numbers have actually been the worst since the start of the fifth month of the calendar, which is not ideal if he's going to be getting regular at bats leading off. With that being said, it's hard to find a viable candidate to replace him since the only guys who have been hitting don't exactly fit the profile of a leadoff hitter and the ones who could slot into that role are also in the midst of a colossal struggle at the plate. Usually you kind of expect that maybe one or two guys to be cold while the rest of the lineup is plugging away at their usual rate of production — this is not the case for the Braves at the moment.
It’s not even like the Braves have guys floating in the mid-to-high 90s wRC+ range during that stretch, either. Of the guys who have below a 100 wRC+ since May 1, Austin Riley is leading the way at 80 wRC+. They're not even coming close to hitting the league average number of 100, they're far adrift. Again, 2⁄3 of the lineup has not only been underperforming lately but they've been straight-up ice cold at the plate. It's genuinely kind of shocking since this is mostly the same lineup that spent most of 2023 being frightening for opposing pitchers from the leadoff spot to the nine-hole.
This slide since May 1 is also starting to reflect in Atlanta's season-wide numbers at the plate so far. They've slipped down to 13th in all of baseball in team wRC+ (101), which means that they’re currently hitting at a middle-of-the-road pace for the season. Their team slash line for the year is now at .244/.310/.401 with .157 in Isolated Power and .313 in wOBA. Those are numbers that the Braves would kill to have in that aforementioned period of time since May 1 but also they’re still well below the standards that this team has set in recent seasons at the plate.
With the lineup currently lost at sea, the pitching staff has been forced to carry most of the weight and we can thank them for keeping the Braves somewhat afloat during these rough times. As a unit since May 1, Atlanta’s pitching staff has a collective ERA- of 90 and a FIP- of 93. Those numbers are good enough to place them firmly in the top 10 since May 1 and it’s been consistent with what they’ve done all season. While Atlanta’s pitching staff has been very solid this season, they haven’t been perfect and with the way this offense has (or has not) been hitting as of late, they’ve needed to be close to perfect in order to have a chance at winning. They’ve also kind of fallen into that frustrating position where it feels like when the offense finally does have a nice day at the plate, that’s when the pitching will finally have a day where they make some serious mistakes.
If it’s felt like opposing teams going up by three or more runs felt like 30, it’s because the Braves have essentially been responding to those modest deficits as if they were down 30, themselves.
Braves are now 0-14 in the month of May when the other team scores more than 2 runs.
— Stephen (@b_outliers) May 31, 2024
So what’s the solution here? Fortunately, it’s still early enough in the season to where it’s not like we can just write them off as being completely doomed. Even though the majority of this lineup has been struggling, we’ve all seen what they’re collectively capable of. I’m not going to engage in any type of pessimism that suggests that guys like Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, Sean Murphy, Travis d’Arnaud and even Adam Duvall are going to remain this cold all season. Again, we’ve seen what they can do when they’re firing on all cylinders and it wouldn’t be shocking at all to see a turnaround just naturally occur as long as they keep on pushing and doing things the right way.
It seems like they’re still on the right track as far as batted ball data is concerned. They’re a top five team in Barrels per Plate Appearance at 6.3 percent, they’re second in all of baseball in Hard Hit percentage (43.8 percent) and they’re tied with the Orioles for the highest average Exit Velocity (90.3 miles per hour) in baseball at the moment. They’re still hitting the ball hard like they usually do — it’s just that a lot of those hard-hit balls are finding gloves instead of finding grass. If they keep on hitting the ball hard like they are, then the batted ball luck should turn around and maybe we’ll see this offense start hitting consistently like we’re all used to from this bunch.
Failing that, we’ll probably see Alex Anthopoulos spring into action if we get into July and closer to the deadline and a lot of these guys are still scuffling. If that’s the case, then I’d imagine that they’ll probably go for getting help in the outfield since it may become apparent by then that Adam Duvall and Jarred Kelenic may not be the best solution for an everyday outfield. They could try to improve in other areas as well but I also don’t envision them selling since as long as they can stay afloat then they’ll be firmly entrenched in the Postseason conversation and there will be no good reason to even consider selling when we’ve already learned from the past couple of seasons that simply getting into the Postseason gives you as good of a shot as any team to win it all.
There’s really no easy way out of this current situation for the Braves other than to just keep on pushing. The pitching has been reliable this season and all they need is the bats to meet them where they’re at. Once that happens, this team should be able to go on a roll. The Braves have arrived fashionably late to the winning table a few times during this run of divisional dominance that they’ve been on since 2018. While it’s already looking like their streak of divisional titles is in jeopardy, they’ve still got their eyes on the Postseason. The bats absolutely have to wake up, though — and hopefully soon, too.
