
Maybe never
To me, the surprising thing about the Braves’ 2025 offense hasn’t really been that they upended a previously-successful approach to do… whatever it is they’re doing now. I didn’t necessarily think they were going to do it, but the preseason evidence kept adding up, then there was the season-opening road trip, but far more damning was the inexplicable slapping we saw at Coors Field. I won’t rehash all that; Austin did a great job covering it yesterday and there’s far more info out there for anyone that wants it at this point.
The surprising thing for me, then, is that we’re now into July and there’s still no real concerted effort to just drop it. Or to do something wholly different. None of the d/evolution for the team’s offensive approach has been smooth anyway, but swing decisions should be fairly easy to just… change. Especially if the change is just a reversion to what was done for a half-decade previously.
At one point, I thought that the offense would try to do the weird stuff they’re doing through about the end of May, realize it wasn’t working even if the theory behind it made sense, and drop it. But things have been even worse in June and they haven’t really dropped it — more just “adapted” it to try and get a mix of harder swings but less aggressive swing decisions anyway, which also hasn’t helped. The fact that we’ve also seen multiple guys return from injury, show a similar level of aggression, and then ameliorate themselves down to whatever their teammates are doing is also just bizarre and honestly, not great.
So, my question is: are the hitters collectively just going to stop this at some point, or is this now the sort of damage that takes months of games, an offseason, Spring Training, new coaching, a stay at a convalescence spa, etc. to rectify at this point? What do you think?