Braves fans, raise your hand if you saw this coming. If you raised your hand, you’re lying. While a slow April for the Atlanta Braves was always within the realm of possibility as superstars Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider continue to rehab injuries, nobody could have predicted anything like the bad start we have witnessed through one week.
The Braves find themselves 0-7 after consecutive sweeps at the hands of the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers. After entering 2025 as a consensus top-five team in baseball, they stand as the last remaining team without a win and have seen their playoff odds crater by over 25%.
As every Braves fan is having to repeatedly remind themselves, it’s still very early. We are three days into April with 155 games remaining on the schedule. All that said, it’s hard to ignore stats like these:
The Atlanta Braves fell to 0-7 tonight
No team in MLB history has ever made the playoffs after starting 0-7
It’s been 42 years since a team that started 0-7 finished with a winning record
(h/t @KevinKeneely1) pic.twitter.com/BVTgERZ3uv
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) April 3, 2025
So what exactly has gone so terribly wrong? Well, the short answer is just about everything, but let’s analyze regardless.
Braves Off to Awful Start in 2025
First, let’s get some caveats out of the way. As mentioned, the Braves are currently without their two biggest stars, which is guaranteed to inhibit any team. They also got a tough draw with their opening week schedule, having to play two upper-echelon teams on the road (both of whom swept their other series and remain undefeated). It’s hard to imagine any team has faced such elite starting pitching through one week as Atlanta. Nevertheless, two or three wins out of seven should have been the minimum expectation for a contending team like the Braves, and to come up empty is a worst-case scenario.
Long losing streaks in baseball can often be attributed to poor pitching, but that hasn’t exactly been the case for Atlanta. Sure, Chris Sale hasn’t looked like a reigning Cy Young Award winner through two starts, and the bullpen has already had a couple of meltdowns. No one has looked particularly sharp outside of Spencer Schwellenbach, but the Braves have only allowed 4.57 runs per game and no more than seven in any individual game. That is usually a good enough performance for at least a few wins in a seven-game stretch, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Which brings us to the main point…
Where is the Offense?
The Braves’ offense has been nothing short of anemic in the early going. The stats are truly shocking: as a team, Atlanta ranks last or second to last in batting average, OBP, slugging, wOBA, and wOBACON. They rank several spots higher in the expected version of these stats sans batting average, including a sizeable 0.63 wOBA/xwOBA difference, but still bottom ten in each. In other words, they have not only hit terribly by most projectable metrics, but have also been the unluckiest lineup in baseball.
While certainly missing some star power at the moment, the lineup still has no shortage of it, in theory. However, the big boppers of years past have all simultaneously turned into ducks so far in 2025. The five key cogs expected to carry the offense without Acuña have been brutal and unlucky.
Michael Harris II: .160 BA, .189 wOBA, .270 xWOBA
Ozzie Albies: .185 BA, .254 wOBA, .313 xwOBA
Austin Riley: .111 BA, .193 wOBA, .248 xwOBA
Matt Olson: .182 BA, .328 wOBA, .470 xwOBA
Marcell Ozuna: .188 BA, .401 wOBA (helped by a league-leading 13 walks), .388 xwOBA
How is That Possible?
A team’s entire lineup starting this cold makes very little sense, and manager Brian Snitker has been mum on a concrete explanation to this point. One area of note is the passive approach being employed under new hitting coach Tim Hyers, which is in stark contrast to the free swinging Braves of the last few years. Atlanta is bottom-five in MLB in overall swing percentage, first pitch swing percentage, and meatball swing percentage.
They probably should be swinging more, though, because the Braves rank fourth in the league in barrel rate. Partially due to such extreme patience, they are in the middle of the pack in chase rate. However, they are still tied for the second-most strikeouts in the league. In short, the Braves are watching too many good pitches go by, and when they do swing, they are often hitting it hard but directly at a defender. Not a good recipe.
When Will It Get Better?
It’s true, the stats on 0-7 teams are extremely disconcerting. So is the absence of a discernable pulse from any hitter on the entire roster. But it’s important to remember that this was a top-ranked team for a reason, and one that has overcome adversity in the past. Very few people remember Atlanta’s 0-4 start to 2021, considering six months later they hoisted a World Series trophy.
The Braves have never needed a homecoming so bad, and luckily, they return to Atlanta to take on the NL East punching bag Miami Marlins starting Friday. Let’s hope the bats can heat up with the weather, because the Braves have some serious ground to make up after this disastrous start. It seems dire now, but one win might be all it takes to wake this sleeping giant.
Photo Credit: © Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
The post Disastrous Opening Road Trip Leaves Braves Searching For Answers appeared first on Last Word On Baseball.