Are we talking at some point today, or tomorrow?
I think about the 2018 season a lot. I don’t know that anyone else does, it’s probably just me. With the horrible start the Braves have had, more than a few people have mentioned that the travails of the franchise in 2024, and to start this season, were maybe some kind of karmic recompense for the successful playoff run in 2021, or maybe for making a mockery of the run environment in 2023. Me, though? I think about 2018. The Braves came into that season with playoff odds of, if I remember correctly, around three percent. They were not supposed to be good, or even average. And they reeled off a 90-win, division-winning season that not only was close to a 20-win improvement over their central projection, but they did it without some kind of wacky record in one-run games or something else of that sort. It wasn’t a dominant team, but tenth in position player value and 12th in pitching value, with about 88 WAR-wins? That’s the sort of thing a franchise only manages to pull off, relative to preseason projections, about once every three decades.
Right now, though, the Braves are basically close to the cusp of doing the reverse. While not every system saw them in a dead heat to start the season, ZiPS did, and that’s why ZiPS currently has the Braves as more likely to miss a playoff spot than not:
An 0-5 start in what is projected to be a tight division can be a pretty big deal. ZiPS *barely* think the Braves are a *worse* team than a week ago, but they’ve dropped from preseason 36% division/70% playoffs to 20%/43%.
— Dan Szymborski (@dszymborski.fangraphs.com) 2025-04-01T09:23:15.108Z
(For comparison, the Steamer-ZiPS blend used by Fangraphs now has them in a dead heat for the division, with playoff odds just south of 80 percent.)
Still, there are worrying signs, some of which are the kind that also made 2024 an uphill climb amid all the injuries:
- Reynaldo Lopez has no timetable; he was able to come back from shoulder worries twice last year, but the Braves have been pretty mum about the plan for him, which means it could be a lengthy absence.
- I was never really on board the Jurickson Profar train, but at this point, there’s at least a non-zero chance that even his middling projections might be overstated for the part of the season after he returns, to the extent they were influenced by stuff he’s probably not going to inject into his body again going forward.
- The team’s offensive approach is a mess approaching comedy club territory. I don’t fault them for trying, but this is a team that is apparently trying to draw more walks, is actually getting opposing pitching staffs that are helping with that by giving them the league’s lowest zone rate to date… and can’t seem to figure out how to blend “swinging at strikes less” with “literally doing anything else that helps you offensively,” except “just swinging less overall.” The team has dropped to 19th in bat speed, seventh in fast swing rate, and 13th in swing length; they were first in all three (and not by meager amounts, either) in the 2023-2024 period where these data have been tracked.
- Through a few games, this the the draggiest baseball we’ve ever seen (on average, of course…), so even if they just revert on a dime, we can probably expect the same level of input-output mismatch shenanigans. The Braves already have the fourth-largest xwOBA underperformance in MLB, and that’s with the third-worst xwOBA as it is. They’re tied for sixth in number of barrels and fourth in barrel rate, but have the third-biggest underperformance on barrels in terms of wOBA, and second-biggest just in terms of rate of barrels actually not being outs. With this team’s pitching, you can probably win a bunch of games by getting your one two- or three-run homer off a barrel when it comes, but without that, you’re not going to score any runs.
Anyway, all of that leads me to my basic question: they’re going to announce this was all a big joke, right? “Hey, it’s been a tough year already, we thought you, the fans, needed some levity. So, just kidding, the team actually started 5-0 with 2023 levels of offense, and also for being such good sports, Spencer Strider and the 2023 NL MVP are back on the roster today.” When do you think we’ll hear about that? Later today, or tomorrow?
Daily Notes
Record: 0-5
Yesterday’s wOBA and xwOBA: .213 | .261 (Season rank: 29th | 28th)
Yesterday’s wOBA and xwOBA allowed: .390 | .477 (Season rank: 22nd | 20th)
Yesterday’s homers: 1
Yesterday’s homers allowed: 2
Record when out-xwOBAing: 0-2 (League: 46-18)
Record when out-xwOBAed: 0-3 (League: 18-46)
Record when out-wOBAing: 0-1 (League: 55-10)
Record when out-wOBAed: 0-4 (League: 10-55)
Record when outhomering: 0-1 (League: 35-9)
Record when outhomered: 0-2 (League: 9-35)