The offense isn’t yet seeing the full fruits of its labor.
The 2024 Atlanta Braves currently rank 16th in Major League Baseball in home runs hit at 29. They still support one of the highest team slugging percentages in the league because they’ve hit 68 doubles, the most in MLB. But their thing has been homers. Last year they tied they all-time major league record with 307 homers hit and they brought back basically the entire lineup, a lineup stacked full of guys who can all destroy baseballs. So why are they, as we sit here today, in the bottom half of the league in home runs hit? Ronald Acuńa Jr has 1 homer. Ozzie Albies and Austin Riley have 2. Matt Olson has 3. We’re over a month into the season and Marcell Ozuna has more home runs (9) than the top four guys in the Braves lineup combined (8). So what gives?
Well fear not, it’s actually not quite as a bad as it first appears. Through the end of the Cleveland series, the Braves currently have 26 barreled outs. A ‘barrel” is a ball hit at an optimum launch angle and exit velocity do the most damage and the Braves have hit 26 of them this year that went for outs. That’s the most in the NL and only two away from being the most in baseball. And the team has had a number of non-barreled doubles to keep the slugging and expected slugging numbers in line but when it comes to homers, they’ve often been done in by bad weather or just bad luck.
Here’s a few examples, I’ve pre-sorted them by xwOBA so you don’t have to:
Matt Olson vs CLE
Ronald Acuńa Jr vs CLE
Austin Riley vs CLE
Yes, 3 of the highest xoWBA barreled outs of the season all came against one team over the weekend. The Braves actually had 7 total barreled outs for the series, which is truly remarkable stuff. For context, Cleveland has 11 barreled outs for the entire season.
Austin Riley vs TEX
Matt Olson vs TEX
Travis d’Arnaud vs HOU
And again, it’s not just that these ball aren’t going for homers, they aren’t going for any hits at all. And that’s just six examples. There are 26 of these total and we’re not to May yet. The reasons for it can be different in every case. Sometimes it’s just bad luck and the ball was hit to the deepest part of the ballpark and pulling it or pushing a little in either direction would’ve resulted in a home run, or at least a double. In a lot of the ones against Cleveland, there was a decently strong wind blowing in from left/left center that probably cost Atlanta more than a couple homers. And the Braves started the season playing up north in some horrendous weather and cold temperatures that certainly played part.
And then there’s the conspiracy route where MLB has been messing with the baseball again and the ball is not flying as far as it use to. There’s some real validity to this idea when you look around baseball and where offense is sitting relative to this same point last season.
I don’t know if they’ve been screwing around with the ball again but offense is way down so far in 2024
April 2023 league wide OPS – .726
April 2024 league wide OPS – .690April 2023 HR/FB% – 12.2%
April 2024 HR/FB% – 10.5%— Stephen (@b_outliers) April 24, 2024
There’s also people who consistently study the drag of the baseball since MLB showed everyone a few years ago that they had very little quality control over the ball the entire sport is based around. And according to them, the ball is definitely different. Or at least behaving differently. Which would help explain why the league-wide OPS is down almost 40 points from April of 2023.
The truth is, it’s probably a combination of all of them. Bad luck, bad weather, and an inconsistent baseball. The point being, the offense and their home run power isn’t off to nearly as slow a start as it may seem by just looking at their home run total. I imagine as we get into the warmer months, and hopefully on the better side of some of this barrel luck, the homers will start to reign down again like they did last year.
And off course, let’s not forget, the Braves are 19-7, the best record in baseball and have scored the 4th most runs in baseball, despite playing 3 or 4 fewer games than the teams ahead of them. Even without the homers up until this point, this team and specifically this offense is still lethal.