What is the story about?
Hat
tip to AG88 for pointing this out.
Right now, there’s a four-way race for top batting line on the Braves:
- Matt Olson leads in wRC+ with 124. He has a .354 wOBA and a .355 xwOBA. However, he’s really struggled in September, yesterday’s homer aside, and you have to go back to the start of August for him to have a then-on xwOBA of .350.
- Next is Drake Baldwin, with a 121 wRC+ and an xwOBA underperformance (.351 wOBA, .362 xwOBA). Baldwin has also struggled a bit in September, and has honestly been pretty meh (league average-ish in both wOBA and xwOBA) since he was on fire in July (after struggling mightily in his return from the Injured List).
- Ronald Acuña Jr. has the same xwOBA as Baldwin, but is underperforming it just a tiny bit more, for a 120 wRC+. He’s been on fire so far in September (189 wRC+), though that’s come with a big xwOBA overperformance in about two weeks’ worth of games: .453 wOBA, .367 xwOBA. Still, that xwOBA is better than what his teammates on this list are managing.
- And then there’s Michael Harris II, who leads the position players in fWAR, with a 119 wRC+ and a .347 wOBA that’s slightly higher than his .340 xwOBA. Harris has been terrible in September (60 wRC+, .259 wOBA, .301 xwOBA), and has honestly been pretty bad inputs-wise from July-0nward. It’s just been hard to tell because he was underhitting his inputs a lot while hitting really well early in the season, and getting lucky while struggling at the plate since. While it’s probably not going to be Harris because he neither has inputs better than the other guys, nor is it his to lose outputs-wise, he could easily run a heater for two weeks anyway.
Acuña’s recent relative performance uptick suggests it could be him. But, it’s not his to lose right now. It really might come to the wire for this quartet. What do you think?
