Matt Olson, per report: “We can’t do this sh*t forever”

The Braves have to start doing better — and nobody knows this better than the players, themselves. Matt Olson in particular has voiced his frustrations.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Atlanta Braves fell to 5-13 on the season after they dropped a 3-1 matinee affair against the Blue Jays. The return of Spencer Strider was a solid one, as he went five innings, struck out five batters and only gave up two runs on five hits and a walk. All in all, you’ll take that from a guy who hasn’t faced big league hitters for just over a full year. Knowing Strider based on his past comments to the media in the past, it’s easy to imagine that he’ll be chomping at the bit to improve upon his return start and get back to the form that made him one of the best and most exciting pitchers in baseball.

With that being said, Strider’s start was overshadowed by the fact that the Atlanta Braves offense once again pulled a collective disappearing act. While the, um, dubious umpiring behind the plate may have helped contribute to the poor performance at the plate for Atlanta, we’ve also seen this story far too many times already in the season. For the sixth time here in 2025, the Atlanta Braves have scored one run or less in a game. It continues a disturbing trend from 2024 when they had that happen in 26 such games — which was more-than-double the amount of times that it happened in 2023.

While you could argue that the majority of those low-scoring efforts came against two of the best teams in baseball (the Dodgers and the Padres) and another one came against this Blue Jays team that has gotten off to a fantastic start on the mound, it’s still tiring to see this offense continue to sputter — even with the recently improved performances, the Braves still have a long way to go before they can even start approaching the lofty heights of what they were doing in 2023 and even 2022.

One of the guys who’s been there for both the highs and the lows that this Braves lineup has been experiencing for the past few years now is Matt Olson. His wRC+ for the season is at 100 following today’s contest but he’s also suffered from some awful batted ball luck this season. Still, simply floating around 100 wRC+ isn’t good enough for a hitter of Olson’s caliber. He’s got to do better (along with a handful of players in this lineup right now) and nobody knows it more than the players do. Olson in particular spoke with the media after the game and Justin Toscano of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shared this pair of quotes following Wednesday’s game:

Again, a lot of those swings and misses likely had to do with the fact that home plate umpire Bill Miller had a very debatable interpretation of the strike zone on Wednesday afternoon. Still, even in this era where a high amount of strikeouts aren’t considered to be the death knell for any given offense, striking out 19 games in a single game has to feel incredibly discouraging. Michael Harris II and Austin Riley both donned Golden Sombreros today and they were at the top of the order. With all due respect to them, that’s unacceptable. Matt Olson and Drake Baldwin (first career home run (that’s been coming for a long time) notwithstanding) each struck out three times. You can’t have four guys spinning their wheels in the mud at the same time in the same game. It’s extremely difficult to have a shot at winning while that’s going on.

With that being said, this isn’t just an issue for the offense at this point. The pitching staff has also fallen off in a major way to start the season. While the 2024 Braves also took a while to get into a groove when it came to their pitching, they’ve definitely fallen off a bit here in 2025 when compared to the great season this staff had last year. Grant Holmes’ eight innings of work during this series in Toronto were a sight for sore eyes, as he’s the only pitcher not named Spencer who has given the fans something to be excited about on the mound so far this season. Olson also stated that the entire team needs to pick it up and he didn’t mince words, either.

Again, if anybody’s hyper-aware of the fact that they need to start getting their stuff together on the field and start putting together a strong string of results, it’s the players themselves. Everybody in that clubhouse knows that they’re capable of a lot more than what they’ve delivered so far. Things should get better with the pitching staff as Spencer Strider returns, Chris Sale gets his groove back (eventually), Spencer Schwellenbach shakes off his struggles and Grant Holmes (hopefully) establishes himself in the rotation. We’ve been here with the offense for far too long, though, and there’s no guarantees that the eventual return of Ronald Acuña Jr. is going to be enough to solve it.

However, like Matt Olson said, they’ve got plenty of time left between now and October to hopefully figure this thing out. This team is far too talented to be scuffling like they have been at the plate. Hopefully returning home against the Twins will help them figure things out but for now, it’s clear that the Braves were fuming after leaving the Rogers Centre in Toronto with yet another loss under their belts for what’s been a very rough month of April.