Great in the heart, lost in the shadow
The Atlanta Braves have fixed one of their greatest weaknesses at the plate...but at what cost?
There’s just something frustrating about taking a pitch down the middle.
Chipper Jones has a funny story about this - facing the Padres in 2009, announcer Boog Sciambi encouraged him to take the first pitch. Boog explained that Jones was the second-least likely hitter to get a first-pitch strike in all of MLB, behind only Albert Pujols.
So Chipper decided to take the first pitch…and it was grooved right down Peachtree.
If you’ve got 94 seconds, Chipper tell the story a lot better than I did:
Atlanta’s had an issue with hitting pitches in the ‘heart’ of the plate, defined as more than a ball width inside of the edges of the strike zone, for a while now. Last season, only three qualified hitters had a positive Run Value on pitches in the heart of the zone - Michael Harris II at +2, Austin Riley at +5, and Marcell Ozuna at +24 (!).1 Everyone else was negative.
Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Let’s talk about it.
They’re being more selective
Virtually everyone on the roster is making more contact in the strike zone. This is the Tim Hyers approach of pulling the trigger on your pitch.
Marcell Ozuna’s zone contact went from 81.4% to 85.7% despite swinging significantly less, from last season’s 74.9% zone swing rate to this year’s 49.6%.2
Ozzie Albies dropped his z-swing percentage by 10% and picked up 5% of zone contact for it. Michael Harris II picked up 10% of zone contact (to a team-best 93.2%), while Sean Murphy added 5%.
Austin Riley and Matt Olson are the outliers here. For Riley, he was being attacked early in the schedule and wasn’t holding his own - his recent numbers for the last week-plus are in line with everyone else for year-over-year improvements. For Olson, same story. I’m also not worried about him - he’s sporting a 68 point difference in his actual and expected batting average and also holds the league’s worst difference between his actual and his expected slugging percentages at 249 points.
And the result here is that the team is much better at pitches in the heart of the zone. Year-over-year, the Braves have improved by thirty points of batting average/on-base and forty points of slug on pitches in the heart of the plate.3
Five different Braves hitters are already positive on the season from a Run Value perspective on pitches in the heart of the zone. This is objectively good.
The problem here is that this selectivity doesn’t come in a vacuum. There’s a trade-off here, and it’s absolutely killing the Braves right now.
They’re MUCH worse in the shadow
The focus on selectivity in the zone means that the Braves have regressed in their ability to hit pitches in the shadow - remember, these can be called balls or strikes, as they’re all within one baseball width from the edges of the strike zone.
Compared to last season, the Braves are getting decimated in the shadow zone - down sixty points of batting average, thirty points of on-base percentage, and ninety points of slug.
And opposing teams haven’t really noticed…yet.
The Braves never get a ton of strikes to hit - last season, they were at 42%, which was the 9th-lowest in all of baseball. This season? 42.3%, virtually the same amount.
And yet, they’re much worse at hitting non-strikes than last year. Will teams adjust?
Believe it or not, this is balancing out right now
When you look at Atlanta’s production year over year, a lot of the numbers are surprisingly close to one another.
K% - up 2.5%
BB% - up 1.8%
BA - down 0.21
xBA - down .07
OBP - down .07
xOBP - up .05
SLG - down 0.42
xSLG - up .01
wOBA - down .13
xwOBA - up .02
Whiff% - down 1%
Hard Hit% - up .4%
Barrels/PA% - up .3%
The most egregious issues here are the batting average and the strikeout rate, although the elevated walk rate helps offset some of that.4
(I want to clarify that this does not look at situational hitting, where the team’s not only performing poorly but is on a multi-year streak of being below average at that aspect of the game.)
So, if the numbers are roughly the same from year to year, what’s going on with Atlanta’s struggles offensively this season? I have a theory about that.
What works against one, works against all
This lineup is built to slug, focusing on elite hard-hit rates at the cost of strikeouts, but with a bit too much focus on the slugging element. Because of that, when an opposing pitcher finds something that works, it works against virtually the entire lineup.
Now, Braves hitters aren’t completely blameless here - the lack of a secondary or two-strike approach is getting a bit ridiculous at this point, but the fact remains: An opposing pitcher or staff can find something that works and just keep spamming it until Atlanta figures it out or one of the relievers fails to execute the gameplan.
This is why, anectodtally, those lineups we’ve occasionally gotten with guys like Nick Allen and Eli White (good speed/contact hitters without a ton of power) at the bottom seem to do well - they’re able to catch those opposing pitchers by surprise, because their pitching plans are set to handle sluggers and these guys can get on and provide a spark.
Now, there’s not a lot the Braves can do about the majority of the lineup at this point - several of those hard-hitting sluggers are locked in for years and Jurickson Profar’s not walking back through that door anytime soon - but there are some small changes the Braves can make.
Change #1: Distribute those speedy contact guys throughout the lineup
There’s no reason to bat Eli White and Nick Allen back-to-back at eight and nine. Put one at the top and one at five or six, for now.
(Putting one of them at the top only holds until Ronald is back, obviously. When he was at his most patient and making the most contact, in 2023, he won an MVP and it fueled the entire heart of the order.)
Change #2: See if you can find any more high-contact bats
Nacho Alvarez fits that profile, although he’s still on the minor league injured list. There are not going to be many players available via trade across the league right at the moment, but start laying the groundwork for those deals now. Identify the positions you’re okay making a change, like left field, if Alex Verdugo can’t give you that.5
Change #3: Teach a damn two-strike approach, whatever it takes
It shouldn’t be this hard for a Braves hitter to shoot one the other way with two strikes to keep an inning going, but they’re all pressing for homers right now. Figure it out, somehow.
Please. For our sanity, figure it out.
Marcell was +24 in the heart, -18 in the shadow, +24 in the chase, and +17 in the waste, mostly from not swinging. It was a GREAT year.
To explain this: He’s being pitched around. His overall swing rate has dropped from 46.8% to just 31.0% because he’s seeing so many balls in addition to his selectiveness.
For the most part, batting average and on-base will always correlate here because these are all strikes; you’re not really walking on a pitch in the heart of the zone unless there’s an egregiously blown call.
Also, the option of Bryan De La Cruz (36% K) and the eventual option of Jarred Kelenic (37%) will help with that strikeout rate.
Across a four-year stretch from 2019-2022 with the Red Sox and Dodgers, he hit .289
Great analysis !!!