The Braves offense has been astoundingly good

The Braves have played 34 games so far (nearly 21 percent of the season), and the 2019 season has been, well, a season. The starting pitching has had its ups and downs. The bullpen has had mostly downs, but some ups. The defense has perhaps had more downs than expected. The tactical management has been frustrating at times, and gladdening at others. But, amidst all of those, there’s been the one key aspect pushing this team forward: this has been an astoundingly good, outstandingly excellent hitting team (so far).

All Statcast (xwOBA/etc.) stats below are through Saturday’s games; all other stats are through Sunday’s games.

Do you remember the 2017 Astros? The cool thing about that team was that they finished with a 123 wRC+, which was the best since the 1976 Big Red Machine. 123 is a pretty big number — any offense that’s 23 percent above league-average offensive production is pretty nuts. (For context, see here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-astros-lineup-has-been-something-historic/.) Well, check out the 2019 Braves (so far): their team wRC+ (excluding pitchers) currently sits at 120. Now, 120 isn’t 123, but it’s not far off. If the season were to end right now, the 2019 Braves would finish in the top 25 of all team seasons since 1946 in terms of hitting. They’d tie the 1964 Braves for the best team offensive season in history. In some ways, that’s all you need to know — they’ve brought the thunder.

But, a deeper look reinforces just how impressive this offensive start has been. The first thing to ask is whether the Braves’ start has been deserved or simply the product of a happy accident. Good news on this front: deserve’s got a lot to do with it.

(See here for the full leaderboard: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/expected_statistics?type=batter-team&year=2019&position=&team=&min=25. It includes pitchers, so AL teams have a leg up.)

Now, the Braves aren’t alone in offensive domination so far in 2019, as there’s a pretty close cluster among the top five teams — and the Braves’ lack of offensive output in the series finale in Miami puts a small damper on these numbers. But, as you can see, they’ve got a .345 xwOBA and a .346 wOBA. In other words, they’re not tightly clasping the scaly hide of a luck dragon. Through Sunday’s games, they trail the Astros, Cubs, and Dodgers in team non-pitcher wRC+; the Astros have gotten pretty lucky this season, the Dodgers have hit somewhat worse but play in a much tougher home environment for offense, and the Cubs have legitimately been (slightly) better.

Just how the Braves have managed this has been pretty interesting. The first thing is that they’ve walked a ton: the team’s walk rate is 23 percent higher than league average, which is absurd... perhaps not on its face, but given that the team has a league-average overall swing rate. The reason for this is that they make tons of contact — they have the fourth-highest overall contact rate, and remarkably, the highest contact rate on non-strikes. Now, theoretically, making contact with a lot of pitcher’s pitches can lead to weak or suboptimal contact, but that hasn’t been the case — even with pitchers included, the Braves are fourth among MLB teams in barrel rate, 12th in hard-hit rate, 14th in exit velocity, and ninth in xwOBA on contact. Rather, it appears that they’re making contact rather than whiffing, earning themselves additional pitches on which they can do damage. (See here for team-by-team comparisons of the Statcast hitting metrics: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/league.)

This walk rate and lack of weak contact has resulted in a momentous ability to get on base. The Braves’ OBP is currently 12 percent higher than league average. That’s the highest among any team since 1946, ahead of the 1976 Reds by backend decimals. As stated, they’re also towards the top of the league in slugging and ISO, so, again, they’re not trading contact or on-base skills for a minimization of power. Rather, they’re working hand-in-hand to some extent. Interestingly, they’re also doing it by squaring balls up rather than directly elevating. The team has the league’s second-highest line drive rate but the fifth-lowest fly ball rate, resulting in the league’s eighth-lowest average launch angle. This just reinforces the on-base idea, though it’s worth noting that there are many pathways to success here: the Cubs are having offensive success despite few liners; the Dodgers hit a ton of fly balls, and the surprisingly-slugging Mariners have done it by basically hitting everything in the air. The line drive rate is pretty noteworthy: while line drive rate has only been tracked since 2002, the Braves currently have a top-four team-season placement in this category. (This is a good comparison of every team’s offensive aptitude relative to the league: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=np&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=23&season=2019&month=33&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=14,d.)

The Braves were projected to put up something like a .336 wOBA this year, which translates to something akin to a mid-100s wRC+ (call it 105 for simplicity). The Braves’ current wOBA is .356. The Braves also finished with a 105 wRC+ (.330 wOBA) last year. A 105 wRC+ was still top 10 among teams in 2018; the Braves’ current 120 wRC+ mark would have led all teams last year. The significance here is that even if we figure the Braves will suddenly revert to exactly what they were projected to be going forward, they’d still finish at a 108 wRC+ or so, a leap from top ten (based on 2018 team stats) to something closer to the top five. And, again, that’s based solely on them reverting fully to preseason expectations, something that shouldn’t necessarily be a given for every Braves batter given what they’ve shown in 130ish plate appearances so far.

Speaking of those batters, here’s exactly how they’ve done what they’ve done, position by position.

Catcher

• Tyler Flowers — 121 wRC+, .384 wOBA on .371 xwOBA (reminder that the wOBA/xwOBA stats are only through Saturday’s game and will drop for most players through Sunday’s games, especially Flowers’ 0-for-4 with two very weakly-struck balls and two strikeouts).
• Brian McCann — 137 wRC+, .384 wOBA on .376 xwOBA.

The Braves’ catchers have been remarkably productive (even including Alex Jackson, the McFlow duo is sixth in MLB in offense from catchers), but also funny in how disparate their paths to this production have been. McCann has walked more than he’s struck out and has posted a completely ridiculous 88 percent chase contact rate (league average is 60 percent) that’s aided him in working those walks and avoiding strikeouts.

Flowers, meanwhile, has a garish strikeout rate above 30 percent and his lowest walk rate since 2015, but is murdering the ball when he makes contact (.504 xwOBACON, a top-20 mark that matches J.D. Martinez so far). As usual, Flowers isn’t chasing much but whiffing like crazy when he does. His big evolution has been a complete launch angle turnaround — Flowers used to be the “guy wot hits too many grounders but hits them super-hard,” and now his contact has become airborne. If it keeps up, or if he reins in the whiffs a bit, it could be a crazy offensive breakout for Flowers, though the Braves won’t complain if he does anything close to what he’s done so far, either.

First Base

• Freddie Freeman — 144 wRC+, .408 wOBA on a .431 xwOBA.

¡Pobrecito Freddie! While he’s 11th in baseball in xwOBA so far (minimum 50 PAs), he’s 26th in wOBA. Along with Dansby Swanson (see below), he’s gotten the worst luck among Braves’ regulars or semi-regulars so far. While Freeman’s diminished power has been a sometimes-popular narrative, it’s essentially baseless at this point. HIs xSLG is essentially identical to his 2017 mark (his highest ever), and he has the highest hard-hit rate of his career at this point. Meanwhile, he’s striking out notably less and walking considerably more, hence an xwOBA well above anything he’s managed previously. He’s reined in his aggression to some extent, both in terms of how frequently he swings but largely in terms of how often he chases, showing continued evolution as a hitter (or at least a new pattern in a small sample; we’ll see what happens). My favorite thing about Freddie Freeman so far — he’s somehow managed to fall short of league-average rates of topped balls (crappy grounders) and under-hit balls (easy flies). Usually, a player’s swing will result in more of one and less of the other, but Freeman underperformed both benchmarks in 2018 and is doing so again this year... the missing contact is all going towards barreling balls this year.

If Freeman wasn’t underperforming his xwOBA, the Braves’ results so far this season would be even more mind-boggling than they already are.

Second Base

• Ozzie Albies — 116 wRC+, .364 wOBA on .350 xwOBA.

Last year, Albies galloped through April with a crazy .410 wOBA on a .336 xwOBA. By the time May ended, the wOBA was down to .362, but the xwOBA was down to .329. Things got worse from there. This year, Albies is still getting somewhat lucky, but he’s also increased his actual quality of contact. His changes are more incremental than dramatic, with a lot of across-the-board improvements and some sticking points (he still chases everything, and that’s actually increased), but part of his success has been the result of a mini-McCann action, as he’s also fouling off a ton of balls he swings at, and cycling into better pitches to hit as a result.

It’s important not to overrate his splits — he has an insane .470 wOBA (that’s a 190s wRC+) against lefties so far, and a blase, below-average line against righties. But, if you look at xwOBA, he’s outhitting it by nearly .100 against lefties (.372 xwOBA) and underperforming it against righties (.330 xwOBA). That should at least delay any discussions of having him give up switch-hitting, as you’ll always live with a guy who has above-average quality of contact from one side of the plate while he rakes from the other.

Third Base

• Josh Donaldson — 133 wRC+, .376 wOBA on .374 xwOBA.
• Johan Camargo — 59 wRC+, .279 wOBA on .265 xwOBA.

Donaldson has, in many ways, been as advertised. He’s raking, he’s out of the lineup here and there, but he’s getting older and isn’t quite in his prior, MVP-type form. There’s a lot of stuff going on with him offensively that deserves more justice than a short paragraph, but so far, he’s drawn a ton of walks without huge changes in his pitch identification or swing rate, which is propping up a line that might be concerning given a lack of elevation and a propensity to whiff. In other words, Donaldson kind of looks like way-better “previous Tyler Flowers” in that he is killing the snot out of the ball when he hits it, but is still hitting nearly 50 percent grounders and missing a lot of hittable pitches. It’s not really something to complain about because an average exit velocity of nearly 93 mph will get you where you need to go, it’s more of a missed opportunity and/or something to watch for the future, as his z-whiff rate continues to crater and his grounder rate hasn’t abated from his injury-prone 2018.

Johan Camargo’s start, meanwhile, has been essentially disastrous. His sub-60 wRC+ is gross, but it’s even grosser that it’s gross while being one of the luckier results among his teammates. I wish I could say there was good news that he was still hitting lefties, but a .302 xwOBA kind of betrays that idea — he just has a wOBA against them in the .400s propping up his line. There’s not actually too much wrong with his aggregate approach stats: his main issues appear to be swinging a bit more than needed and getting under everything, which aren’t usual collapse-type red flags. He’s only had about 80 PAs so far, so there’s plenty of time for things to turn around. But they haven’t been good so far.

Shortstop

• Dansby Swanson — 115 wRC+; .352 wOBA on .375 xwOBA.

Swanson’s gone through stretches where his wOBA and xwOBA diverged a lot, and then others where they converged (because hitting lots of homers pushes wOBA above xwOBA). Right now, he’s enduring another of the former. Most stuff about Swanson has been said already, and he looks like a brand new batsman at this point. He’s hitting the ball much harder, has stopped chasing things he could never hit, and has one of the prettiest vertical spray charts you might ever see.

It’s been a dramatic turnaround, and while I expect some of the siren call of regression to past norms to be heeded, it’ll be really interesting to see how exactly the interplay and tension between nu-Swanson and old-Swanson resolve themselves.

Left Field

• Ronald Acuña Jr. — 135 wRC+, .382 wOBA on .375 xwOBA.

The kid has had a weird month-plus. He started out blazing hot but with no results, running a .422 xwOBA but a .304 wOBA through around April 6. Add in one more week, and things evened out in a hurry, with a .448 xwOBA and .449 wOBA. Easy peasy. He hit his peak a few days later with a mammoth homer to end April 16 with a .483 wOBA / .479 xwOBA. Since then, though, it’s not been so great, with a .284 wOBA / .275 xwOBA. This is really just dicing up natural ebb-and-flow into ever-smaller pieces for commentary, so suffice to say that Acuña went from blazingly good to icily not-so-good essentially on a dime. It happens. We’ll probably see a bunch more this season. The end result has still been great.

Functionally, Acuña has been more or less the same batter as he was over the full season last year. No, not the part where he went berserk in the second half, but the full season. This may just be a norm for him, mixing crazy-good stretches with underwhelming ones. Or maybe he finds some consistency. The only real change he’s made has been to (and you’ve read this before), make more o-contact to stay alive longer, with a key difference being that unlike Albies and McCann, he’s not really finding better pitches to drive later in PAs despite hanging in there for further pitches.

Center Field

• Ender Inciarte — 76 wRC+; .282 wOBA on .268 xwOBA.

Ah, Ender Inciarte, cause celebre of 2019 wailers and teeth-gnashers. Let’s not mince words. He’s been bad. So bad. His exit velocity is now sub-80 mph, which is so low that no one even really manages to do it for a full season. He’s beating everything into the ground, making the weakest type of contact at more than triple the MLB average rate, and striking out twice as often as he’s done before, in part due to a crazy collapse of what used to be an elite contact skill. Not only that, but he seems to take/swing at pitches at random, as his swing rate hasn’t really changed but his frequency of swinging at pitches right down the pipe has fallen apart, while he’s swung at missed way more worse strikes than even before.

But, really, he does this every year. (Ignore the May 2019 mark, as it’s the result of just a few games.)

Slow starts aren’t anything new for Inciarte — they are Ender Inciarte. So hold off on the worry, if your worry is about his bad results. If you want something to worry about, see below, but don’t confuse “this is a worrying sign, should we start putting together contingency plans?” with “his results are terrible to start the year (again), the sky is falling.”

Right Field

• Nick Markakis — 146 wRC+, .377 wOBA on .375 xwOBA.
• Matt Joyce — 140 wRC+, .388 wOBA on .355 xwOBA.

In 2018, Nick Markakis managed a late-career renaissance by hitting the ball in the air more (and, unlike 2016, actually getting appropriate results). In 2019, he’s been different in unexpectedly good ways yet again. He’s hitting the ball harder than before. He’s walking way more than before, despite chasing way more than before — again, the fouls are in play here. A lot of the spray chart isn’t really any different, and in fact, a regression from his 2018, as he’s once again hitting nearly half his balls on the ground. But, that extra one mph in exit velocity is carrying a ton of water, and if he goes back to 2018 levels of lifting the ball without losing the exit velo and walk rate gains — watch out! I have no idea how rare it is for 35-year-olds to suddenly find an extra mph in exit velo that they hadn’t before, but that’s where he is right now. The Braves are going to need him to keep it up to keep their offense at historic levels.

Matt Joyce, meanwhile, isn’t quite slouching himself, and has basically become crystallized as Other Nick Markakis in my mind. (They basically have the same fWAR if pro-rated to the same number of PAs, with Markakis hitting better while Joyce does everything else better.) The similarities are really only surface level, as they get to kinda-similar endpoints in very different ways, with Joyce whiffing a lot and not walking nearly as much, while barreling balls and lifting them off the ground with much greater frequency. Joyce is 34 and has also found an extra 1.5 mph of exit velo relative to his past few seasons, so it’s a fun time to be a lefty-swinging, mid-30s corner outfielder in Atlanta.

Charlie Culberson

Okay, so Charlie Culberson has only had 23 PAs so far in 2019, so he’s not really a big part of this awesome offense, at least not so far. But his batting line in those 23 PAs is insanely wacky.

• 171 wRC+
• .727 slugging, .364 ISO
• Zero walks, 30.4 percent strikeout rate
• .480 wOBA on .334 xwOBA... but with a .502 xwOBACON; hard-hit rate (95+ mph exit velo) of 50 percent
• Crazy-elevated chase and whiff rates across the board
• 43 percent of contact has either been “barreled” or “solid” with no weak contact

It’s like he took the advice of “swing hard in case you hit it” and somehow transformed into an avatar of that adage for 23 PAs. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything like Culberson’s 2018, and if he keeps this bit of craziness up, he will have wowed and stunned us in a different way in 2019.

So, there you have it. The Braves! They’ve mashed the ball. Now they’re going to Los Angeles, to face off against another team that has mashed the ball. Balls will be mashed. Prepare yourself.