<img alt="Atlanta Braves v Washington Nationals" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2bR6t50CArRjVsfVvKMYdwI0bgo=/0x0:5964x3976/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73581282/2171419025.0.jpg">
Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images
At least Tuesday was fun? The Atlanta Braves are now on an off-day with a weekend wraparound four-game series against the Dodgers looming right in front of them. It sure would’ve been nice to head into that series with at least a pair of wins under their belt and a Wild Card spot in their possession. Instead, the Braves are once again currently on the outside looking in after sandwiching a dominant performance with two incredibly disappointing performances at the plate.
The Braves looked completely lost at the plate on Monday, figured it out on Tuesday and then got dominated by a familiar foe on Wednesday. Needless to say, it’s not how you want to go into a series against a Dodgers team loaded with talent but they’re going to have to figure out a way to get past what has been a frustrating and disjointed start to the week so far.
Offense is fickle and fleeting
On Monday against the Reds, the Braves accrued a grand total of two hits and zero runs in a 1-0 shutout loss. They proceeded to follow that up by completely tearing into the Nationals on the very next night in a completely different city by the score of 12-0. They then capped off these three days of whiplash by losing 5-1 in a game where the offense evaporated once again. Scoring 13 runs over three games would usually be a decent output under normal circumstances but as you can see, they did a horrible job of spacing those runs out and came out of this stretch by dropping two out of three in disappointing fashion.
What makes this even more annoying is who the Braves were facing as far as pitching was concerned. It had been a month since Nick Martinez had gone at least seven innings in a game, so naturally that ended up coming against the Braves and additionally, his start received a score of 81 from FanGraphs’ Game Score v2 metric, which was only topped by that August start against the Brewers where he gave up only one hit and didn’t walk anybody. The Braves had no answers for Martinez on Monday night and ended up suffering their 10th shutout loss of the season. For reference’s sake, they were shutout 13 times over the past three seasons combined.
That 12-run explosion on Tuesday night sure was nice but we’ve all been here before with this year’s team. They will have big games from time-to-time but it never seems to last long. Sure enough, it only took 24 hours and an appearance from The Boogeyman himself for the offense to have yet another power outage. Jake Irvin had been struggling coming into Wednesday night’s game but that didn’t matter in the least bit as he gave Atlanta fits for the fourth time this season. Remember that Game Score v2 metric I brought up earlier? When it comes to Irvin’s six best starts this season according to that metric, half of them came against the Braves. There’s not much else you can say about how this matchup has gone for the Braves in 2024 but I think Pedro Martínez can come up with something.
Oh look, another injury
What made that 12-0 win so interesting is that (like so many wins this season, it feels like) it really seemed like the Braves had to trade one of their players going on the shelf for a comfortable and decisive win. Yes, the Braves may have won that game and it sure was fun to see them pulverize the Nationals for once this season but it came at the high cost of losing Reynaldo López until (hopefully) the final week of the season. It was immediately apparent from the first few pitches that López threw on Tuesday night that something was wrong and now Atlanta’s going to have to figure out a way to make do without the guy who has been their second-best starter so far this season.
It’s just the latest chapter in a season that’s been full of gloom and doom as far as injuries go. Nobody’s going to feel bad for the Braves considering their good luck with injuries in the past and the Braves aren’t going to feel sorry for themselves considering that they’re still right in the thick of a race for a Wild Card spot but at the same time, it has been genuinely astonishing to see just how bad this injury bug has been for Atlanta here in 2024. The final month of the season hasn’t even served as a respite, either. I’m not going to say that it’s going to get better after what happened to both Whit Merrifield and Reynaldo López after I said “it’s going to get better” so instead all I’m going to do is be patient and hope for the best. It’s all you can do when it comes to this sort of thing after everything that’s happened.
Injuries alone can’t explain this
With all of that being said, injuries alone can’t really excuse these disjointed performances. While I was at the game on Monday, it hit me that the Braves at this point had six of their originally scheduled regulars for this season in the lineup. The only replacements that were present for that game were Jorge Soler, Gio Urshela and Luke Williams. Everybody else in that lineup is a player who we all figured would be in there and if we’re being completely honest, they haven’t been getting the job done consistently this season.
Looking at the six players in the lineup on Monday who were figured to be regulars here in 2024 (Michael Harris II, Marcell Ozuna, Matt Olson, Sean Murphy, Jarred Kelenic and Orlando Arcia), the only one who is performing above average at the plate when it comes to their career wRC+ is Ozuna. Kelenic and Arcia are performing around their career averages, which is not good at all since both of them respectively have career wRC+ numbers that are well below 100. Even with that happening, this team would probably be in a better position if the usual suspects looked like the usual suspects instead of these strange interlopers who have been showing up in 2024.
The three star players in the form of Harris, Olson and Murphy have been seriously underperforming this season and at this point, it’s costing the Braves dearly. While Harris and Murphy could use their respective injuries as a reasoning for their underperformance, Olson’s just been having a plain ol’ down season. While the injuries for the team have certainly played a role in what a slog of a season that this has been, the stars have to start looking like stars again, and soon. We’ve seen flashes of it but now more than ever, the Braves need their star players who are healthy to start shining once again, before it’s too late.
<img alt="Atlanta Braves v Washington Nationals" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2bR6t50CArRjVsfVvKMYdwI0bgo=/0x0:5964x3976/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73581282/2171419025.0.jpg">
Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images
At least Tuesday was fun? The Atlanta Braves are now on an off-day with a weekend wraparound four-game series against the Dodgers looming right in front of them. It sure would’ve been nice to head into that series with at least a pair of wins under their belt and a Wild Card spot in their possession. Instead, the Braves are once again currently on the outside looking in after sandwiching a dominant performance with two incredibly disappointing performances at the plate.
The Braves looked completely lost at the plate on Monday, figured it out on Tuesday and then got dominated by a familiar foe on Wednesday. Needless to say, it’s not how you want to go into a series against a Dodgers team loaded with talent but they’re going to have to figure out a way to get past what has been a frustrating and disjointed start to the week so far.
Offense is fickle and fleeting
On Monday against the Reds, the Braves accrued a grand total of two hits and zero runs in a 1-0 shutout loss. They proceeded to follow that up by completely tearing into the Nationals on the very next night in a completely different city by the score of 12-0. They then capped off these three days of whiplash by losing 5-1 in a game where the offense evaporated once again. Scoring 13 runs over three games would usually be a decent output under normal circumstances but as you can see, they did a horrible job of spacing those runs out and came out of this stretch by dropping two out of three in disappointing fashion.
What makes this even more annoying is who the Braves were facing as far as pitching was concerned. It had been a month since Nick Martinez had gone at least seven innings in a game, so naturally that ended up coming against the Braves and additionally, his start received a score of 81 from FanGraphs’ Game Score v2 metric, which was only topped by that August start against the Brewers where he gave up only one hit and didn’t walk anybody. The Braves had no answers for Martinez on Monday night and ended up suffering their 10th shutout loss of the season. For reference’s sake, they were shutout 13 times over the past three seasons combined.
That 12-run explosion on Tuesday night sure was nice but we’ve all been here before with this year’s team. They will have big games from time-to-time but it never seems to last long. Sure enough, it only took 24 hours and an appearance from The Boogeyman himself for the offense to have yet another power outage. Jake Irvin had been struggling coming into Wednesday night’s game but that didn’t matter in the least bit as he gave Atlanta fits for the fourth time this season. Remember that Game Score v2 metric I brought up earlier? When it comes to Irvin’s six best starts this season according to that metric, half of them came against the Braves. There’s not much else you can say about how this matchup has gone for the Braves in 2024 but I think Pedro Martínez can come up with something.
Oh look, another injury
What made that 12-0 win so interesting is that (like so many wins this season, it feels like) it really seemed like the Braves had to trade one of their players going on the shelf for a comfortable and decisive win. Yes, the Braves may have won that game and it sure was fun to see them pulverize the Nationals for once this season but it came at the high cost of losing Reynaldo López until (hopefully) the final week of the season. It was immediately apparent from the first few pitches that López threw on Tuesday night that something was wrong and now Atlanta’s going to have to figure out a way to make do without the guy who has been their second-best starter so far this season.
It’s just the latest chapter in a season that’s been full of gloom and doom as far as injuries go. Nobody’s going to feel bad for the Braves considering their good luck with injuries in the past and the Braves aren’t going to feel sorry for themselves considering that they’re still right in the thick of a race for a Wild Card spot but at the same time, it has been genuinely astonishing to see just how bad this injury bug has been for Atlanta here in 2024. The final month of the season hasn’t even served as a respite, either. I’m not going to say that it’s going to get better after what happened to both Whit Merrifield and Reynaldo López after I said “it’s going to get better” so instead all I’m going to do is be patient and hope for the best. It’s all you can do when it comes to this sort of thing after everything that’s happened.
Injuries alone can’t explain this
With all of that being said, injuries alone can’t really excuse these disjointed performances. While I was at the game on Monday, it hit me that the Braves at this point had six of their originally scheduled regulars for this season in the lineup. The only replacements that were present for that game were Jorge Soler, Gio Urshela and Luke Williams. Everybody else in that lineup is a player who we all figured would be in there and if we’re being completely honest, they haven’t been getting the job done consistently this season.
Looking at the six players in the lineup on Monday who were figured to be regulars here in 2024 (Michael Harris II, Marcell Ozuna, Matt Olson, Sean Murphy, Jarred Kelenic and Orlando Arcia), the only one who is performing above average at the plate when it comes to their career wRC+ is Ozuna. Kelenic and Arcia are performing around their career averages, which is not good at all since both of them respectively have career wRC+ numbers that are well below 100. Even with that happening, this team would probably be in a better position if the usual suspects looked like the usual suspects instead of these strange interlopers who have been showing up in 2024.
The three star players in the form of Harris, Olson and Murphy have been seriously underperforming this season and at this point, it’s costing the Braves dearly. While Harris and Murphy could use their respective injuries as a reasoning for their underperformance, Olson’s just been having a plain ol’ down season. While the injuries for the team have certainly played a role in what a slog of a season that this has been, the stars have to start looking like stars again, and soon. We’ve seen flashes of it but now more than ever, the Braves need their star players who are healthy to start shining once again, before it’s too late.
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