<img alt="MLB: JUL 05 Phillies at Braves" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SOl0Sz0es3TwQiof0E5oC7G8U8I=/0x0:3600x2400/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73477305/2160306436.0.jpg">
Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Though not talked about nearly as much as things on the surface, these things will decide the Braves’ fate for the remainder of 2024 The Braves have done nothing but tread water since the calendar flipped to May, resulting in a fair bit of consternation surrounding a team that still has one of the better records in MLB, and is, at least at this point, clear of the massive morass of mediocre performances that comprise the majority of team records so far. That said, there are two things that have gotten them to this point, and the extent to which they continue to persist is going to determine what happens to the Braves this season — likely moreso than anything else. Yes, moreso than any additional injuries (please no), any trades, any in-game decisions, you name it. This is the Braves’ season in a nutshell to date, and the biggest questions that remain are how much these things will keep up.
Thing #1: xwOBA underperformance
I get why no one’s really talking about this, but I also don’t get it at all. In this respect, things have gotten insane, and stayed insane.
For the season, the Braves have a .327 xwOBA and a .309 wOBA. Even if you account for the fact that Baseball Savant still hasn’t recalibrated xwOBA this year, such that the league has a .310 wOBA but a .317 xwOBA, and lop seven points off the xwOBA, the Braves would have a “true” .011 gap between their team wOBA and xwOBA. Only the White Sox have a bigger gap this year.
Unsurprisingly, things get crazier if you consider the “treading water” portion of the season. Historically, from May-July, teams outhit their xwOBA by about .002, accounting for the fact that weather in those months helps the ball travel a bit more compared to what are substantial negative effects on ball flight, and therefore positive outcomes, in April (and to a lesser extent, September). This year, the underperformance for all teams is .005 compared to .007 for the full season. In any case, from May through the current date, the Braves have a .322 xwOBA but a .298 wOBA. Again, even if you adjust for the .005, then they have a .317 xwOBA and a .298 wOBA. That gap, after adjusting for the lack of 2024 calibration so far, is the third-biggest in the Statcast era for any team in the May-July period. The only two teams with bigger gaps were the 2021 Cardinals and the 2023 Tigers. But, here’s the thing: both Busch Stadium and Comerica Park have inherent wOBA suppression relative to xwOBA: Busch Stadium is literally the regularly-used venue with the greatest “natural” gap between the two in Statcast history, and Comerica is fifth on that list owing to its cavernous center field. Truist Park, meanwhile, isn’t in the same ballpark (literally and figuratively).
Nor is this some kind of persistent Braves problem. From May-July, here are the Braves’ gaps between wOBA and xwOBA, from 2019-on: -.008, -.005, .003, 0, -.001, -.019 (that last figure is adjusted for the .005 uncalibration this season). What’s happening to the Braves in this regard this season is unprecedented.
Nor is this an artifact of the Braves’ approach, because it’s widespread. The Braves’ deviation from their xwOBA is in the bottom half of the league (i.e., more punishing than average) on all of the following: grounders, fly balls, liners, pulled balls, balls hit to center, balls hit the other way, barrels, flares, and weak grounders. The only things where the Braves have been so blessed as to “outperform” the league’s deviation between inputs and outputs are: solid contact (not-quite-barrels), routine fly balls, and swinging bunts/weak rollers.
The barrels thing deserves special mention: for the season, the league has a 1.294 xwOBA and a 1.240 wOBA on barrels (there’s that lack of calibration). The Braves, though, have a 1.336 xwOBA (sixth in MLB) and a 1.101 wOBA (dead last in MLB) on barrels. It should be fairly obvious that this is by far the biggest gap between barrel inputs and barrel outputs in MLB; no other team has a gap in either direction bigger than .177. The Braves’ gap is so big that the difference between their deficit (-.235) and the next-most-screwed team (the Marlins at -.177) is bigger than the absolute gap of 18 of the 30 teams.
But, really, that same logic just shows how unbelievably pantsed the Braves have been from May forward. If you leave calibration aside for just a moment, their -.024 xwOBA underperformance from May-onward is .006 bigger than the underperformance of the next-closest team. 17 of the league’s 30 teams have an absolute underperformance less than .006.
It’s also been consistent from May-onward: second-biggest underperformance in May, second-biggest underperformance in June, third-biggest underperformance so far in July.
Why belabor this point to this extent? Why does this matter? Because, fundamentally: no matter what else the Braves do, whether it’s making brilliant trades, whether it’s optimizing their lineup, whether it’s making the most inspired and effective pitching decisions, they can’t overcome this. It’s simply too much. Just using basic back of the envelope math, a team with the tenth-best hitting (what the Braves have in terms of xwOBA since May started) and second-best pitching (what the Braves have in terms of pitching fWAR since May started) is maybe not a top-five team, but easily a top-ten team, winners of a weak division and easy Wild Card leaders otherwise. A team with bottom five hitting (what the Braves have in terms of wOBA since May started) and second-best pitching, well, that’s basically a .500 team. You can’t manage or gut yourself out of that — you can maybe hope that some other aspect of luck, e.g., sequencing, smiles on you — but that’s it. And if the Braves made a flurry of trades over the next week and everyone is still underperforming their xwOBA down the stretch, it won’t matter.
I started writing this part after the series loss to the Cardinals. In their first loss to the Reds, the Braves underhit their xwOBA by .090. Yeah.
Thing #2: Saving the arms for maybe nothing (a.k.a., overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer)
You probably already know that the Braves have been in extreme pitching management mode all year. There are 62 starters in MLB that have made more starts than any Braves pitcher. 13 percent of the team’s starts have gone to Bryce Elder, Ray Kerr, Darius Vines, and Allan Winans; in addition to off-days and the like, the Braves basically devote one game every three weeks solely to additional rest for the starters. While this level of extreme care is potentially warranted, it’s also somewhat novel for the team.
Not novel, meanwhile, is the team’s kid-gloves management of the bullpen. Braves relievers are 27th in innings pitched and 29th in batters faced. Braves starters are fourth in MLB in numbers of batters faced in high leverage the third time through the order or later; Braves relievers are literally dead last in the number of batters faced in high leverage. (The Braves also only have 68 reliever-appearances in high leverage in 99 games played, which... yeah.)
These things are factual, and they’re unlikely to change. In fact, while I strongly urge you to consider the source, there’s this:
#Braves are going to continue plugging pitchers from Triple A into the rotation to provide extra rest for their regular starters. Look for Darius Vines to make a start as soon as Wednesday vs. Reds, which is currently listed as TBA for #Braves. They've not divulged anything.— David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) July 23, 2024
Just to be clear: the Braves opted to shuffle their rotation to give their important starters extra rest coming out of the All-Star Break, pitching none of them against the Cardinals, the team immediately behind them in the Wild Card standings. Their playoff odds are currently as low as they’ve ever been this season and have dipped below 90 percent for the first time with the series loss to the Cardinals, but nonetheless appear to be forging ahead with their season-long pitching management plan. So far, so good (kinda), I guess, but you can also wargame scenarios for the rest of the season and start to wonder a bit:
(A) - The Braves have better results down the stretch and the pitching management doesn’t cost them. This is the best-case scenario. This is the primary plan where everything works out.
(B) - The Braves find themselves in an uncomfortably tight playoff race down the stretch. If this happens, the Braves will have to make an awkward choice. They’ll either have to stop the extra rest / bullpen kid gloves stuff, or keep doing it and hope that at least things break well for them over those last few important games. Unfortunately, the playoff schedule being what it is, if the goal of season-long pitching management is to avoid arms being “gassed” for the playoffs, it’s now possible that by virtue of having to claw for a playoff spot (or homefield advantage in a three-game series, or whatever), the arms will be “gassed” anyway due to heavy usage in a short period. Or, by virtue of being forced to pitch the “good starters” on the final days of the regular season, you’ll see a Bryce Elder-led playoff rotation for the first round. This is not a particularly great scenario.
(C) - The Braves miss the playoffs. This isn’t very likely. But if this happens, the Braves will have done all their pitching management for nothing, again. (Remember saving the bullpen in 2023? It accomplished basically nothing; the only thing you can credit to it was saving their one win in the NLDS. They didn’t use the bullpen to try and keep the Bryce Elder start manageable, and Spencer Strider ended up having more trust than the bullpen in his starts anyway.)
Those are kinda the only three options. You can assign whatever probabilities you want to them and be a good Bayesian and adjust them as the season goes along. Mine are something like 35/50/15 right now, which means that there’s a 65 percent chance at this point that continuing the current pitching management strategy could result in serious problems. If the Braves do persist with the strategy, it suggests they think the probability of (A) is much higher. I hope they’re right, but refer to Thing #1 above, which still hasn’t abated.
<img alt="MLB: JUL 05 Phillies at Braves" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SOl0Sz0es3TwQiof0E5oC7G8U8I=/0x0:3600x2400/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73477305/2160306436.0.jpg">
Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Though not talked about nearly as much as things on the surface, these things will decide the Braves’ fate for the remainder of 2024 The Braves have done nothing but tread water since the calendar flipped to May, resulting in a fair bit of consternation surrounding a team that still has one of the better records in MLB, and is, at least at this point, clear of the massive morass of mediocre performances that comprise the majority of team records so far. That said, there are two things that have gotten them to this point, and the extent to which they continue to persist is going to determine what happens to the Braves this season — likely moreso than anything else. Yes, moreso than any additional injuries (please no), any trades, any in-game decisions, you name it. This is the Braves’ season in a nutshell to date, and the biggest questions that remain are how much these things will keep up.
Thing #1: xwOBA underperformance
I get why no one’s really talking about this, but I also don’t get it at all. In this respect, things have gotten insane, and stayed insane.
For the season, the Braves have a .327 xwOBA and a .309 wOBA. Even if you account for the fact that Baseball Savant still hasn’t recalibrated xwOBA this year, such that the league has a .310 wOBA but a .317 xwOBA, and lop seven points off the xwOBA, the Braves would have a “true” .011 gap between their team wOBA and xwOBA. Only the White Sox have a bigger gap this year.
Unsurprisingly, things get crazier if you consider the “treading water” portion of the season. Historically, from May-July, teams outhit their xwOBA by about .002, accounting for the fact that weather in those months helps the ball travel a bit more compared to what are substantial negative effects on ball flight, and therefore positive outcomes, in April (and to a lesser extent, September). This year, the underperformance for all teams is .005 compared to .007 for the full season. In any case, from May through the current date, the Braves have a .322 xwOBA but a .298 wOBA. Again, even if you adjust for the .005, then they have a .317 xwOBA and a .298 wOBA. That gap, after adjusting for the lack of 2024 calibration so far, is the third-biggest in the Statcast era for any team in the May-July period. The only two teams with bigger gaps were the 2021 Cardinals and the 2023 Tigers. But, here’s the thing: both Busch Stadium and Comerica Park have inherent wOBA suppression relative to xwOBA: Busch Stadium is literally the regularly-used venue with the greatest “natural” gap between the two in Statcast history, and Comerica is fifth on that list owing to its cavernous center field. Truist Park, meanwhile, isn’t in the same ballpark (literally and figuratively).
Nor is this some kind of persistent Braves problem. From May-July, here are the Braves’ gaps between wOBA and xwOBA, from 2019-on: -.008, -.005, .003, 0, -.001, -.019 (that last figure is adjusted for the .005 uncalibration this season). What’s happening to the Braves in this regard this season is unprecedented.
Nor is this an artifact of the Braves’ approach, because it’s widespread. The Braves’ deviation from their xwOBA is in the bottom half of the league (i.e., more punishing than average) on all of the following: grounders, fly balls, liners, pulled balls, balls hit to center, balls hit the other way, barrels, flares, and weak grounders. The only things where the Braves have been so blessed as to “outperform” the league’s deviation between inputs and outputs are: solid contact (not-quite-barrels), routine fly balls, and swinging bunts/weak rollers.
The barrels thing deserves special mention: for the season, the league has a 1.294 xwOBA and a 1.240 wOBA on barrels (there’s that lack of calibration). The Braves, though, have a 1.336 xwOBA (sixth in MLB) and a 1.101 wOBA (dead last in MLB) on barrels. It should be fairly obvious that this is by far the biggest gap between barrel inputs and barrel outputs in MLB; no other team has a gap in either direction bigger than .177. The Braves’ gap is so big that the difference between their deficit (-.235) and the next-most-screwed team (the Marlins at -.177) is bigger than the absolute gap of 18 of the 30 teams.
But, really, that same logic just shows how unbelievably pantsed the Braves have been from May forward. If you leave calibration aside for just a moment, their -.024 xwOBA underperformance from May-onward is .006 bigger than the underperformance of the next-closest team. 17 of the league’s 30 teams have an absolute underperformance less than .006.
It’s also been consistent from May-onward: second-biggest underperformance in May, second-biggest underperformance in June, third-biggest underperformance so far in July.
Why belabor this point to this extent? Why does this matter? Because, fundamentally: no matter what else the Braves do, whether it’s making brilliant trades, whether it’s optimizing their lineup, whether it’s making the most inspired and effective pitching decisions, they can’t overcome this. It’s simply too much. Just using basic back of the envelope math, a team with the tenth-best hitting (what the Braves have in terms of xwOBA since May started) and second-best pitching (what the Braves have in terms of pitching fWAR since May started) is maybe not a top-five team, but easily a top-ten team, winners of a weak division and easy Wild Card leaders otherwise. A team with bottom five hitting (what the Braves have in terms of wOBA since May started) and second-best pitching, well, that’s basically a .500 team. You can’t manage or gut yourself out of that — you can maybe hope that some other aspect of luck, e.g., sequencing, smiles on you — but that’s it. And if the Braves made a flurry of trades over the next week and everyone is still underperforming their xwOBA down the stretch, it won’t matter.
I started writing this part after the series loss to the Cardinals. In their first loss to the Reds, the Braves underhit their xwOBA by .090. Yeah.
Thing #2: Saving the arms for maybe nothing (a.k.a., overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer)
You probably already know that the Braves have been in extreme pitching management mode all year. There are 62 starters in MLB that have made more starts than any Braves pitcher. 13 percent of the team’s starts have gone to Bryce Elder, Ray Kerr, Darius Vines, and Allan Winans; in addition to off-days and the like, the Braves basically devote one game every three weeks solely to additional rest for the starters. While this level of extreme care is potentially warranted, it’s also somewhat novel for the team.
Not novel, meanwhile, is the team’s kid-gloves management of the bullpen. Braves relievers are 27th in innings pitched and 29th in batters faced. Braves starters are fourth in MLB in numbers of batters faced in high leverage the third time through the order or later; Braves relievers are literally dead last in the number of batters faced in high leverage. (The Braves also only have 68 reliever-appearances in high leverage in 99 games played, which... yeah.)
These things are factual, and they’re unlikely to change. In fact, while I strongly urge you to consider the source, there’s this:
#Braves are going to continue plugging pitchers from Triple A into the rotation to provide extra rest for their regular starters. Look for Darius Vines to make a start as soon as Wednesday vs. Reds, which is currently listed as TBA for #Braves. They've not divulged anything.— David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) July 23, 2024
Just to be clear: the Braves opted to shuffle their rotation to give their important starters extra rest coming out of the All-Star Break, pitching none of them against the Cardinals, the team immediately behind them in the Wild Card standings. Their playoff odds are currently as low as they’ve ever been this season and have dipped below 90 percent for the first time with the series loss to the Cardinals, but nonetheless appear to be forging ahead with their season-long pitching management plan. So far, so good (kinda), I guess, but you can also wargame scenarios for the rest of the season and start to wonder a bit:
(A) - The Braves have better results down the stretch and the pitching management doesn’t cost them. This is the best-case scenario. This is the primary plan where everything works out.
(B) - The Braves find themselves in an uncomfortably tight playoff race down the stretch. If this happens, the Braves will have to make an awkward choice. They’ll either have to stop the extra rest / bullpen kid gloves stuff, or keep doing it and hope that at least things break well for them over those last few important games. Unfortunately, the playoff schedule being what it is, if the goal of season-long pitching management is to avoid arms being “gassed” for the playoffs, it’s now possible that by virtue of having to claw for a playoff spot (or homefield advantage in a three-game series, or whatever), the arms will be “gassed” anyway due to heavy usage in a short period. Or, by virtue of being forced to pitch the “good starters” on the final days of the regular season, you’ll see a Bryce Elder-led playoff rotation for the first round. This is not a particularly great scenario.
(C) - The Braves miss the playoffs. This isn’t very likely. But if this happens, the Braves will have done all their pitching management for nothing, again. (Remember saving the bullpen in 2023? It accomplished basically nothing; the only thing you can credit to it was saving their one win in the NLDS. They didn’t use the bullpen to try and keep the Bryce Elder start manageable, and Spencer Strider ended up having more trust than the bullpen in his starts anyway.)
Those are kinda the only three options. You can assign whatever probabilities you want to them and be a good Bayesian and adjust them as the season goes along. Mine are something like 35/50/15 right now, which means that there’s a 65 percent chance at this point that continuing the current pitching management strategy could result in serious problems. If the Braves do persist with the strategy, it suggests they think the probability of (A) is much higher. I hope they’re right, but refer to Thing #1 above, which still hasn’t abated.
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