It’s time for Matt Olson to remember he’s Matt Olson.
Ronald Acuña Jr. isn’t coming back this season. Neither is Austin Riley, at least not in the regular season. Marcell Ozuna has been awesome. If you asked anyone who the Braves four best hitters were coming into the year, you would’ve gotten those three names and Matt Olson. Acuña is out. Riley is out. Ozuna has shown up all year. Only one guy left.
The Atlanta Braves need Matt Olson.
While keeping their position players healthy and on the field has been a nightmare for the Braves all season, one player that hasn’t been impacted by injuries at all has been Olson. He’s played every game this season. He also played every game last season. And the season before that. Since the Braves traded for him before the 2022 season, Olson hasn’t missed a game. He’s actually the top ironman in all of baseball with 455 consecutive games played. Health has not been his problem. Neither has performance, at least until this year.
Through 547 plate appearances this season Olson has a .729 OPS, good for exactly a 100 wRC+, which of course is right at league average. So he hasn’t been disastrous, but he hasn’t been great, or even really good, just average.
But it’s when you compare his line from this year with his line from last year, you really see how far he’s dropped. Last season, Olson produced a triple slash line of .283/.389/.604 with a .413 wOBA, a .393 xwOBA, and a 160 wRC+. That’s a monstrous stat line and unsurprisingly led to him being top five in MVP voting. This season, Olson is slashing .226/.309/.420 with a .315 wOBA, a .327 xwOBA, and a 100 wRC+. That’s an 80 point drop in on-base percentage and a 200 point drop in slugging percentage which has led to a 100 point drop in wOBA and a 60 point drop in wRC+. And if counting stats are more your thing, Olson hit 54 homers last season with a 139 RBI. This season he has 22 homers and 66 RBI with a little over a month of baseball left to play.
It’s hard to fathom how the same healthy hitter could produce both of those stat lines in back-to-back seasons. No one should’ve expected Olson to reproduce his insane 2023 season, which almost certainly will go down as the best season of his career and was one of the greatest offensive seasons in franchise history. But by the same token, no one could’ve predicted the regression to hit this strongly in 2024. For his career, Olson has been around a 135 to 140 wRC+ hitter and that’s what I expected him to drop down to this season, from his incredible 160 wRC+ in 2023. On no planet did I see 5 months of healthy baseball for Olson resulting in a 100 wRC+ of production.
To be fair, Olson has been slightly better since the All-Star break, but even that has been just a 110 wRC+. Nowhere close to the elite hitter he was last year, or the great hitter he’s been most of his career. If the season ended today, this would be the worst full-season of Olson career, coming immediately after the very best season of his career. Baseball is a cruel sport.
And look: If Acuña was healthy and putting up another MVP level season, and Riley was healthy and putting together another All-Star level season, and Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris and Sean Murphy had spent the whole season healthy and putting up their normal numbers, then Olson’s fall-off wouldn’t be so noticeable or so impactful. This offense had enough talent where they could’ve withstood just one of those things happening. Or even two. But not all.
Acuña is out. Riley is out. Harris, Albies, and Murphy have all missed significant time and struggled with their own performance when they have been healthy. In fact, all three of those guys are having the worst offensive seasons of their careers as well, only adding to the problem. But none of them sit in the middle of the order night in and night out and none of them make $22M per season like Olson does. Those 3 also all play up-the-middle defensive positions that bring inherent value to the team. Olson is a first-baseman. Those guys need to hit and hit a lot.
The good news is that the Braves have had some unexpected positive performances to at least help a little. The newcomers, Jorge Soler, Ramon Laureano and Whit Merrifield have all produced, and for Laureano and Merrifield, at a level far exceeding expectations. Marcell Ozuna has been awesome all year, Harris is back, and Ozzie will be back soon. Plus they have one of the very best pitching staffs in all of baseball to lean on — and they’ve been leaning hard lately. The Braves are 10-5 in their last 15 games and 5-2 in their last 7 games but most of that has been off the backs of incredible pitching. Over the last week the Braves have scored 19 runs over 7 games, averaging 2.71 runs per game, and yet are still 5-2 in that stretch. That’s impossible to do without lights-out pitching. It’s also highly unsustainable. They have to hit more and it starts with Olson.
He does have a homer and two doubles in his last few games, so maybe this is the time he wakes up and remembers he’s Matt Olson, but the production has come so spread out. Olson hasn’t recorded a 3-hit game since June 16th, and only has nine 2-hit games in that stretch. There’s been nothing consistent. Nothing to lean on. It’s been a homer here, a double there, and just a hope that this is the time he wakes up. Even his walk rate is at almost a career low, which is why he’s currently running the worst OBP of his career.
Baseball is incredibly hard and hitting a baseball is arguably the hardest thing to do in all professional sports. Especially in modern times, when everyone throws 98 with nasty breaking stuff, elite bullpens and optimal strategies being implemented. No one is saying it’s easy.
But the Braves need more. They need better. They need Matt Olson.
And they need him now.