Atlanta Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies has been an absolute difference-maker ever since the Braves brought Albies up to the big leagues in 2017. While his reputation in the minor leagues was as a switch-hitter with great bat-to-ball skills without much in the way of power due to his size, he has defied those projections and instead been a 25-30 homer guy (when healthy) for the vast majority of his big league career.
However, amid a league-wide reduction in offense and the Braves lineup's struggles, Albies' power has seemingly cratered without a lot of great answers as to why. With injuries to key guys like Ronald Acuna Jr. and Michael Harris II, the Braves' offense is REALLY going to need for him to figure it out.
The Braves desperately need Ozzie Albies to get over his power outage
Overall, Albies' production has not been bad, per se. He is hitting .260 which is pretty close to what we have grown to expect out of him and his 101 wRC+ is mediocre, but again not completely out of whack for him. His walk rate of 6.7% is still too low, but again...about what he usually does and his strikeout rate is actually the best rate he has posted (for now) since his rookie season. For those hoping this is just a bad luck streak, his .299 BABIP this season is his best mark since 2020.
However, the metrics that measure his power output and quality of contact tell an entirely different story. Let's compare just Albies' power numbers from last season to this one.
Slugging | ISO | xWOBA | xSLG | Avg Exit Velo | Barrel % | Hard Hit % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | .513 | .233 | .340 | .467 | 88.7 mph | 8.2% | 39% |
2024 | .390 | .130 | .297 | .366 | 88.6 mph | 4.4% | 31.7% |
That is a pretty big yikes. While his average exit velocity in 2024 is right in line with his career norms, everything else here has seen a dramatic drop-off year over year. While one could do this with any number of Braves' hitters this year (Matt Olson, Austin Riley, etc etc), Albies' issues could be rooting in his swings and subsequent performance against one type of pitch in particular.
In 2023, Albies feasted on breaking balls with a .318 average and .519 slugging percentage against them while seeing them 25.6% of the time and offspeed stuff is what gave him fits. This year, however, Ozzie is hitting just .208 and slugging just .325 against breaking pitches with a dreadful .190 xBA and .244 xSLG. He has been really bad against them and somehow should actually be WORSE than that. That isn't good.
We have seen Albies struggle against breaking stuff in the past. He wasn't great against them in 2022 and they ate him alive in 2020. If he can make the adjustments he did back then to start putting go swings on the ball and get his shockingly bad 9.8 pop-up percentage down and turn them into more line drives, he will be fine and some of Albies' more recent results have been promising. If not, this could be a long season for him.