Braves' playoff loss to Padres was due to some troubling issues on offense

Atlanta Braves fans watched as the 2023 season’s best offense floundered against pitching they punished in 2023. They want to know what happened and why it wasn’t addressed during the season. The answers are pretty simple, and are related to coaching.

Recreating the 2023 offense wasn’t going to be easy, and injuries made it impossible

Teams rarely see multiple players have concurrent career years, but in 2023, The Braves had career years from Ronald Acuña Jr, Matt Olson, Marcel Ozuna, and, believe it or not, Orlando Arcia. 

Austin Riley notched his third consecution season of 30 or more homers, Sean Murphy cooled off in the second half but hit 21 homers, and Ozzie Albies almost duplicated his 2019 Silver-Slugger winning season while playing only in 148 games.

The Braves' offense ended the year with the first 40.9 fWAR season in franchise history and only the 15th in baseball. The last NL teams to break that barrier was the Big Red Machine in 1975 and 1976.

Injuries;

• Ronald Acuña Jr. missed 113 games.
• Ozzie Albies was on the injured list twice and missed 63 games.
• Austin Riley slumped early, began to find his stroke, then a broken wrist ended his season missed 52 games early.
• Michael Harris II missed 52 games.
• Orlando Arcia reverted to his pre-Braves form.
• Sean Murphy played one game, strained his oblique, missed 48 games, and never found his way at the plate.

It’s impossible to replace players like Acuña, Albies, Harris, and Riley. It’s reasonable to say that their loss cost the Braves at least 65 homers and weakened the defense, particularly the outfield defense, significantly. No team can replace losses like those. The combined fWAR of all the players used to fill those impossible voids is -0.1, with Gio Urshela and Whit Merrifield’s 0.8 the most productive.

Kevin Seitzer isn’t the Problem

Russell Carleton penned “What is a good hitting coach worth?” in May 2013 and concluded that the best hitting coach is worth about two wins a season; the rest is up to the players.

That means Seitzer is to batters what Leo Mazzone was to pitchers, or about twice as good as most hitting coaches. Nothing suggests that’s changed.

Kevin Seitzer tells players to make sure their bat is on a level plane and concentrate on driving the ball up the middle. Contrary to the screaming of Twitter-critters, Seitzer does not encourage swinging from the heels, and interviews with Austin Riley and others confirm that’s the idea.

Hitting coaches aren’t paid to teach players things they should have in high school or earlier.  He can’t teach players a two-strike approach or to inside out a ball if they’ve never developed that skill.

When a player slumps, he can only suggest ways to help a batter get out of it; the batter has to swing the bat.

The lineup does lack consistency, so how do they do that?

Improving the Lineup

Improving the lineup means adding players who get on base so the power bats have someone to drive like Trea Turner does for the Phillies and Brandon Nimmo for the Mets.

Willie Adamas is a free agent, but he’ll want more than Swanson received from the Cubs in years and dollars, so I doubt the Braves do that. The best fit is Seiya Suzuki, so perhaps they could tempt the Cubs into trading for him or Ian Happ.

That’s a Wrap

The Braves have already said the entire coaching staff will return in 2025. If that's a deal breaker for you, consider your deal broken. Consider that Brian Snitker got the team into the postseason with an offense that provided an 18th in baseball18.5 fWAR. That’s making something out of not much.

The idea some throw around that the players are trying or mailed it is ludicrous in the extreme. The Braves worked their tails off and made a run worthy of respect. They’ll return healthy next year to set the record straight.

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