The Atlanta Braves aren’t in first place… yet… but they are gaining traction in the East as rivals falter.
Now this is more like it: the Atlanta Braves are hitting on all cylinders right now: pitching, defense, relief pitching, and offense. They are winning series; they are gaining on the Phillies, and they are having success while others around them are facing adversity.
So many times, I’ve been writing phrases like “we’ll see how this plays out” or “we’ll have to see how they fare”.
We’re over 50 games into the season now – nearly 1/3rd done – and enough of those things have already been manifested that we can start to see a team figuring itself out and blossoming right before us.
- The West Coast trips are almost done. 3-1 in Arizona and 3-1 in San Fran to balance the 0-3 in Los Angeles. Only a trip to San Diego (July 12-14) remains.
- 3-0 vs. Cubs so far and 2-1 vs. both Milwaukee and St. Louis.
- 5-1 vs. Marlins while Phils (5-2), Mets (5-3), and Nationals (1-2) have not taken care of business as well.
Over the past 2 weeks (not counting the final win over SFG):
- Batting – Atlanta 8th in majors in fWAR, 7th in homers (21), 8th in average, while ‘only’ at 106 on the runs created metric (13th).
- All pitching (includes relief) – Atlanta 5th in majors in ERA (3.34), 4th overall in ground ball percentage, tie for 8th in HR’s allowed per 9 innings.
Riley Damage
The run that Austin Riley is on is nothing short of remarkable, and that’s especially true as I took a gander at his BrooksBaseball page.
If you only looked at the cover sheet, you’d think he was a total mess at the plate:
- FASTBALLS: “exceptionally aggressive”, “disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss”
- BREAKING PITCHES: “exceptionally aggressive”, “disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss”
- OFFSPEED: “steady approach”, “disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss”
Yes: he’s striking out a lot. 31.3% of the time… and twice more in 6 trips to the plate on Thursday.
His Whiff Rate chart is kind of wild:
- 50% or higher rates for pitches of all kinds high in the strike zone
- Around 30-50% for pitches below the zone
At the same time, his line drive outcomes chart is equally crazy:
- pitches at the level of the strike zone (whether horizontally inside, in the zone, or outside) have a very high chance of being scalded somewhere… often over a fence.
There is a conclusion that can be drawn here, and it’s something that opposing pitchers could cringe at…
Like teammate Ronald Acuña has done, this kid needs to lay off balls that are above and below the strike zone. If he can do that successfully, then watch out: walks will increase, strikeouts decrease, and the power would definitely continue as he swings at higher quality (by location) pitches.
But let’s say that this doesn’t happen.
For the sake of his continued production, I believe it must, for at some point (soon), pitchers are going to through him junk as high or as low as they can get away with… hoping for a whiff.
If he chases, the whiffs will continue, and the occasional blast will as well since he’s simply a big strong kid with easy power. The Braves would even be able to tolerate lower production since “lower” still means something in the .900+ OPS range.
He’s been that good, and I don’t see a reason why he’d drop below that kind of production – particularly since he’s spraying the ball to all fields.
But again: once he can start ignoring more pitches out of the strike zone… the sky’s the limit for him as that word “disastrously” stops being applied to his swing and more applied to his opposition.