The best offense in baseball in 2023 has been anything but in 2024.
Thursday’s game against the Nationals marks the 54th game of the season, exactly 1⁄3 of the way through the season, and for a majority of it, the Braves offense has been a shell of the version we saw in 2023.
Incredibly, in the month of May, the Braves have not won a single game where the opposing team has scored more than 2 runs. They’re 0-13 in such games and maybe even more incredibly, they’ve had 12 games this month where the opposing team did not score more than 2 runs. They’re 12-0 in those. Wins are coming off the back of elite pitching and only elite pitching at the moment. If the opposing team’s offense puts anything of note up on the scoreboard, the Braves simply aren’t winning that game.
Since April 21st, so the last 7 weeks or so, the Braves have an 86 wRC+ as a team, ranking them as a bottom 5 offense in baseball over that stretch. That means for the 10 or so weeks they’ve been playing baseball in 2024, the Braves have had one of the worst offenses in the sport for about 70% of that. As a reminder, this was the very best offense in baseball in 2023, and arguably one of the 5 best offenses of all time. They hit as many homers as any team in history last year and they led the league in basically every offensive category of note, including fWAR, wRC+, wOBA, xwOBA, AVG, OBP, SLG, runs scored, and on and on and on.
So what’s happened exactly? There’s a few variables to look at.
Offense is down league-wide
The Braves aren’t the only team around baseball experiencing a drop in offensive production. It’s a league-wide problem. Through April and May of 2023, the league had a collective .729 OPS. Through April and May of 2024, the league has collective .697 OPS. Runs are down in 2024, homers are down, average, OBP, everything is down this year compared to last year. With Rob Manfred at the helm, and the history of the league being unable to standardize the ball, the natural question has become, have they been messing with the baseball again? And there’s certainly some granular evidence to support that. But MLB will never admit it as it took actual scientist looking at the ball last time before they ever admitted anything was different.
But regardless, offense is down across the board for some reason (it’s the ball) and is absolutely contributing to the Braves offensive struggles so far in 2024.
Injuries
A league-wide drop in offense can only be blamed so much, especially when another clear variable is sitting right there: the Braves haven’t had their full lineup healthy and available at all this season. Sean Murphy pulled his oblique on opening day and just came back within the week. Ozzie Albies has done a full IL stint this season, Austin Riley just missed about 2 weeks with a pulled muscle in his side, and now of course their MVP Ronald Acuńa Jr is out for the year with a torn ACL. Guys like Chadwick Tromp, and Zach Short, and Luis Guillorme, and David Fletcher have seen way too much of the field in 2024 while guys like Orlando Arcia have seen way too much of the middle of the order. With everyone healthy and producing, players like Arcia and Jarred Kelenic should consistently be at the bottom of your order, but when Tromp and Short are in there, now all of the sudden Arcia is batting 5th or 6th, and the effect snowballs. Talent only matters when the talent is out there and the Braves have had a miserable time getting all their talent on the field at once this season.
Classic underperformance of batted balls
The Braves have a team wOBA of .320 this season. They have an xwOBA of .330. If they’re actual wOBA was .330, they’d have the third best offense in baseball behind the Yankees and Dodgers and tied with Phillies, which would be much more in line with expectations given the injury situation. On an individual level, it has effected the best players on the team. Before he got hurt Ronald Acuńa Jr had an xwOBA thirty points higher than his actual number. Same with Matt Olson. Same with Austin Riley. Adam Duvall has an xwOBA almost forty points higher than his actual. Travis d’Arnaud’s expected number is twenty points higher. Michael Harris’ is ten. Would better batted ball luck get the Braves all the way back to 2023 levels of offense? No, but better batted ball luck, better injury luck and MLB not screwing around with the ball would certainly get you a lot of the way there.
Maybe it’s just May
Atlanta has spent the last 6 years being arguably the best team in baseball, consistently winning their division and making the playoffs. The last 3 years, they won a World Series, won 101 games and won 104 games. They are at the very top of the league. But even for them, the month of May has been trouble. This year, they’re 12-13 in May. In 2023, May was easily their worst month at 15-14. In 2022, they went 13-15 in May. They went 13-12 in May of 2021 and even in 2019, May was their second worst month. The Braves play like crap in May. For a team that finishes 30 or 40 games over .500 every year, every May they seem to be doing everything they can to just stay above water. The last 3 years, where again they won a World Series and had two triple-digit win totals, they’re 1 game under .500 in May. I don’t know why. There’s really no reason why. This is baseball. It’s what makes it great and awful all at the same time. My only response: here’s to June.
And there are other reasons too. They’ve faced good pitching, some bad weather sprinkled in, the randomness of baseball in small samples and on, and on. Good new is it’s almost June. Summer is here. The bats will (hopefully) heat up with the weather like in years past. But with the Phillies surging, this version of Braves’ baseball needs to hit the bricks and the new version (also known as the old version) needs to hit the baseball.