Braves’ offensive struggles confound players and coaches

After a third of the season, the Atlanta Braves offense is not in a great place.

A season away from leading the league in several offensive categories, including batting average (.276), on-base percentage (.344), slugging (.501), OPS (.845), OPS+ (125), points scored (947). ), home runs (307, tying the MLB single-season record) and more, the current iteration of the roster is much worse.

The 2024 Atlanta Braves are below average in home runs, sitting one behind the league average of 57. They are two behind the league average in runs (243) and six above the average home run total. strikeouts in baseball with 479 on the year.

And May was even worse.

Atlanta scored just 3.4 runs per game in May, the third lowest in baseball and behind the Chicago White Sox (15-42) and Cincinnati Reds (24-32). Regardless of the results of tonight’s game against the Oakland Athletics, it will be a losing record in the month for the Braves, a feat that has not occurred since June 2022. This fourteen-month streak was the most long active streak in the majors. .

So what’s going on?

Nobody knows.

“We’re in a rut right now. I just can’t get going offensively, passing the baton to the next guy. Austin Riley told the media in the clubhouse after Thursday night’s loss. “And it’s like, when we hit the balls hard, it’s right at the guys. You try to take the positive out of everything, and hopefully that will only make us numb to the future and make us better baseball players, better people in the long run.

That comment from Riley about hard-hit balls being taken out backs up when you think about it. The Braves saw 3.9 percent of their hard-hit balls, defined by Statcast as having an exit velocity of 95 mph or greater, turn into outs. This is the fourth highest hard-hit strikeout percentage in baseball, behind the Houston Astros (4.2%), Baltimore Orioles (4.1%) and Kansas City Royals (4.0%). ).

Breaking it down by individual, several players have seen an even greater impact on their production: Michael Harris II has a team-leading 5.3% hard hit ratio. His average hard hit is 103.0 mph, fifth hardest in the sample and behind notable powerhouses like Giancarlo Stanton (104.1), Aaron Judge (103.1) and Vlad Guerrero Jr. (103 ,4).

Six different Braves players all have 25 or more hard putouts, with the highest percentages behind Harris being several slower-starting Atlanta hitters: Austin Riley (4.4%), Matt Olson (4.2%) and Ronald Acuña Jr. (4.1%).

As a team, the Braves lead baseball in hard hit percentage (44%) and exit velocity (90.3 mph) and yet are below average in home runs, with just 57. The average at Current batting and slugging sits at .249 with a .407 hitting, nearly 100 points shy of last year’s team-high .501 hitting. While the expected numbers aren’t as high, based on batted ball quality, the Braves should mathematically have a .255 batting average and a .433 slugging average.

Atlanta is reportedly projected to have the fourth-best strikeout numbers in the league. The three teams ahead of Atlanta in slugging, the Baltimore Orioles (.435), Los Angeles Dodgers (.435) and New York Yankees (.434), average 76 home runs per team and are all among the best point units. at baseball.

Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, talk to Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constutution before Thursday’s match, he is not yet worried.

“If they all started the way they usually hit and then had a tough time in July, no one would be talking about it because the numbers would be there. But when the numbers aren’t there, you don’t score points and you go through a difficult period at the start, it gets magnified. In fact, it’s all about perspective, and these guys know very well not to panic, and that’s the most important thing.

And while players aren’t panicking, they definitely felt frustration, as Riley’s comment explains.

The coaching staff feels it too, but there is no easy solution other than to keep trying to solve the problem. “We didn’t hit,” manager Brian Snitker said last night. ” Honestly, I do not know. If I knew, I would tell them and we would correct it. It is not so easy. I just have to keep working, and that’s what we’re going to do.

Seitzer said the struggles are magnified not only because of the timing, which happens early in the season, but also because seemingly everyone except designated hitter Marcell Ozuna is struggling at the same time.

“You go through tough times and offenses fall apart. It’s not fun when this happens and usually when things start up again you still don’t have time to relax and breathe easy because there are usually two or three guys struggling when things are going well – as is what happened last year.

“We had two or three guys fighting, but the other six were on fire, and then when the three guys went back, two or three of the other guys started fighting, and everyone got back up. We were able to cover the times when guys were having a tough time, but when there are six or seven guys not doing what they’re capable of doing, that’s part of the job. That’s part of what I have to do as a hitting coach, is weather the storms and continue to look for the sun and lead guys into the sun, and it’s going to get better.

This team is too good not to improve.