By the Numbers: How do the Atlanta Braves fare after 20 games?

The Atlanta Braves are among MLB’s best teams at hitting the ball hard, which has resulted in one of the game’s best run-producing lineups.

Despite some individual cold streaks here-and-there, and a couple of concerning wrist ailments to the lineup’s talented youngsters, the Atlanta Braves continue to assert themselves as one of the game’s fiercest lineups.

The Braves’ 104 runs scored are the best in all of baseball (only two teams have surpassed 100 runs, the other being the Los Angeles Dodgers, and there’s a simple formula to their success.

Hit the ball hard.

Embrace the Barrel

The Atlanta Braves continue to succeed when it comes to barrels per plate appearance.

Statcast shows they rank third in MLB in this category, knocking a “barrel” 5.7 percent of the time.

Equally as impressive is that Atlanta batters have hit 171  balls in excess of a 95-mph exit velocity, which is 4th most in baseball.

It’s no wonder, then, with their penchant for squaring up on the ball and clubbing it hard that the Braves continue to lead MLB in extra-base hits (doubles, triples, and home runs), with 68 of them.

An Offensive Identity

Twenty games in, and we can certainly distinguish the M.O. of this Atlanta Braves lineup.

They don’t walk quite as much as you’d like, and they strike out far more than you’d like.

To illustrate, the Braves rank:

• 12th in batting average (.242)
• 14th in on-base percentage (.314)
• 29th in strikeouts per 9 innings (28.0) – eek!
• 16th in walks per 9 innings (8.9)

However, this lineup is packed with power, and they flat-out slug their way to high run totals.

In fact, Atlanta sits 6th in team slugging percentage (.438), and their isolated power (ISO) is also elite (.190, 6th best in MLB).

This lineup will frustrate you with their tendency to swing-and-miss, then make you forget all about it with their multi-run homers and extra-base hits.

A Myth of High Strikeouts

If you looked at the Atlanta Braves’ previously-mentioned high strikeout rate, your first thought – like mine – might be that the team perhaps chases too many pitches that they should be taking.

To an extent, that’s true: the Braves have a lineup consisting of a lot of free-swingers, and they’d likely better their odds for a positive outcome at the plate if they exercised a little more patience.

But just because the K-numbers are as high as they are doesn’t mean that the team is notorious for chasing bad pitches.

In fact, Atlanta has shown an aggressiveness for pitches *in* the strike zone, more so than any other team in baseball.

Per Fangraphs, the Braves have the highest Z-swing% (zone swing pct) of all MLB teams at 72.3%.

As far as outside the zone swing rates? It’s not great, but not near as bad as the strikeout numbers would have you believe.

The Atlanta Braves are 10th highest in MLB in O-swing% (outside zone swing pct).

What’s to make of this? 

The combination of Atlanta’s embracing of the barrel, coupled with an aggressive approach at pitches inside the strike zone, leads to a boom-or-bust nature within the lineup

The Atlanta Braves are seemingly either striking out or crushing the ball, with not as much in-between as other MLB teams generally see.

As long as the Atlanta Braves keep scoring runs at an elite clip, does it really matter? We’ll see how things develop over the final two-thirds of the regular season.