While power rankings tend to change often throughout the season, it's always a good sign to see your favorite team appear in them at any point. The 2023 Atlanta Braves have been one of baseball's best teams since the season began at the end of March.
Things looked tough there for a little while with some key offensive players being injured and losing pitchers Max Fried and Kyle Wright to injury as well. It felt like things were going the wrong way and the Braves would be in a dead heat with the other teams in the NL East.
Somehow, the Braves just kept winning and despite the bullpen struggling to hold some of the games, Atlanta found ways to win games. The offense just continued to get better and better and developed into the juggernaut it is today.
.@ronaldacunajr24 is your NL Player of the Month AND Player of the Week! 🔥#ForTheA pic.twitter.com/GmuMdpgeFd
— AtBraves ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Braves) July 3, 2023
The Braves are currently 57-27 on the season and on a nine-game win streak. They have the best record in the National League and the best in baseball by winning percentage. They are nine games ahead of the second-place Marlins in the NL East with the Phillies 12.5 games out, the Mets 19 games out, and the Nationals 23 games out from first.
They have the best offense in the National League with a .271 team batting average and first in OPS with a .837 team OPS. Atlanta leads all of baseball with 161 home runs which are 30 more than the second-best team, the Dodgers. Not to mention, one of the team's best players, Ronald Acuña Jr, just won NL Player of the Month for the month of June. There's also Matt Olson who is the National League home run leader with 28 of them.
Believe it or not, the Braves have the 24th fewest strikeouts in the league with 681 of them and are 15th in walks with 281 of them. So, they could improve upon the walks a little bit but the fact that they aren't striking out as much shows how well they are seeing the ball right now.
These factors combined with the improved pitching earned Atlanta recognition atop MLB's power rankings to start the month of July. The offense tops the NL and recently broke the NL record for home runs in a month with 61 of them.
The Braves' pitching staff has a 3.64 team ERA which is the best in the NL and third-best in all of baseball. That is wild considering the team is without Max Fried and Kyle Wright. The emergence of Bryce Elder and the continued success of Morton and Strider has helped keep things afloat in their absence.
The team now added Michael Soroka back into the mix again and if he gets back on track, once Fried is back sometime after the All-Star break, this pitching staff would be even more difficult to face. The bullpen has some improving to do still but they have looked much better than they did the first half of the season.
Atlanta surely deserves to be at the top of the power rankings and with them sending 8 representatives to the 2023 All-Star Game, it's obvious why they would be. The rest of the league is on notice as this current Braves squad certainly looks built for a World Series run this Fall.