Past summaries:
How did the Braves do recently?
The Braves went 9-4 in the first half of May. They were 22-10 through April (.688) and 9-4 is a .692 winning percentage, so… that’s remarkably consistent considering there’s no reason to expect that 13 games will look like the past 32 games, but here we are. It’s a great place to be. Only four teams have done better in May so far — the Brewers have one fewer loss, the Phillies and Cubs have one more win, and the Rays are 11-2. The Braves remain the only above .500 team in the NL East.
Their division lead of nine games (over the Nationals and Phillies) is bigger than the division leads in the other five divisions combined. It’s been a good time to be a Braves fan.
For the month so far, the Braves are sixth in position player value, including sixth in hitting outputs, tenth in hitting inputs, and fourth in defensive value. The pitching continues to be “okay” and “defense-reliant” — 16th in fWAR and 19th in FIP-, but it’s actually improved a fair bit, and is ninth in xFIP- with a mark of 90 in May. (They were 15th with a 98 xFIP- in April.)
Game-by-game, going by pregame odds, the Braves “should have” gone something like 7-6 (or maybe 6-7) in the month so far. Naturally, they did much better, against a tough part of the schedule. The win in the middle game of the Los Angeles series was probably their biggest upset so far (and might be something they can’t replicate because there won’t be another game stacked against them in the same way); on the flip side, losing a Chris Sale-Ben Brown-and-Cubs-bullpen matchup was one of their least-expected losses of the year (second, behind the loss to the Athletics early on).
Over this two-week-ish span, the Braves have added another 1.5ish wins to their projected end-of-season win total, which now sits at 94.5 per FanGraphs’ playoff odds page. Their playoff odds continue to approach unity (but probably won’t get there, rounding or not, for a while given that this is still baseball we’re talking about).
How are the Braves doing for the season?
Well, they lead the Rays by a game (two more wins) for best record in MLB. They still project to end the season with the second-best record (Dodgers). They have the best run differential in MLB, and the third-best BaseRuns differential (Dodgers, Yankees).
They’re third in position player value, including third in hitting inputs, second in hitting outputs, and fourth in defensive value. They’ve clambered up to 11th in pitching value, including up to 11th in xFIP-, and still lead the league in ERA- (thanks, defense!). At this point there isn’t too much more to say about that you haven’t already read a few times. The Braves are good, yay.
How are the hitters doing?
The gray-shaded per-600 PA column gets less irresponsible each time, but is still irresponsible.
The first half of May was marked by Drake Baldwin and Matt Olson continuing to be super-awesome, while Ozzie Albies and Mauricio Dubon took a big step back. Fortunately, Austin Riley coming alive and continued good-to-great production from the various role players on the roster essentially made up for the dropoff in Dubon-and-Albies production. The lefty-swinging triumvirate of Baldwin, Olson, and Michael Harris II continues to have some great-to-absurd season-level stats, even after Harris fell off a bit these past few weeks as he recovered from his quad trouble. Dominic Smith hasn’t had any huge season-defining moments recently, but continues to power along with an almost to-good-to-be-true batting line. None of the regulars had a particularly egregious wOBA-xwOBA gap over the last couple of weeks, which is kind of weird in and of itself.
Here’s the wOBA and xwOBA stuff in visual form, for May-so-far:
As you can see, the remarkable-esque thing is that there isn’t much that’s remarkable other than Olson and Baldwin continuing to be awesome, and perhaps that Jorge Mateo is somehow solidly in the upper-right quadrant. If we do the season to date…
Also note that I changed the axis to cap out at 150, since Harris is no longer on a complete rampage that separated him from everyone else.
Mike Yastrzemski didn’t have a great few weeks, but got the hits when it counted. He actually leads the position players in WPA, though that’s partly because Olson has had a rough last few games. On the flip side, Riley is WPA vortexing again (again…) despite an overall improvement in his performance. I’d definitely call Yastrzemski the position player of early-mid May for the Braves given his very direct involvement (even when not starting!) in multiple wins over this period.
How are the pitchers doing?
My ability to do this biweekly for pitchers is getting absolutely destroyed by the fluid-but-well-managed pitching situation. At this point, the Braves have three “starters,” a prospect who is being used as a “starter” because they’re not using him as a flex arm, and then four guys who are or have been used as “starters” but are either not starting anymore, or are effectively becoming not-quite-starter opener-type guys. As a result, I just included everyone who had a start in May in the table below.
Among this sextet, there’s a pretty clear delineation between “it’s working” and “it’s not working,” with Martin Perez kinda hanging out in a weird liminal space. Grant Holmes will likely be limited to one time through the order eventually, but his numbers are suffering in the interim. JR Ritchie’s numbers are really ugly; I’m not sure he’ll be optioned down and honestly I’m not sure that I would option him down to clear up the pitching logjam, either, but that’s an option (pun sorta intended).
Spencer Strider had a rough landing in his season debut, but then bounced back and eviscerated the Dodgers in one of his better post-2023 outings. His most recent start was a mixed bag; as the table above shows, he’ll be great going forward if he can somehow run a tiny HR/FB, but since that’s unlikely, it’d be better if he reined in the walks like he did in Los Angeles. Still, I think over these two weeks, his return was a big boost to the rotation given the other numbers you see above.
As for the bullpen, well, it’s kind of the bulk-pen at this point. Oof slash woof. Dylan Lee was absolutely filthy over the last few weeks; Robert Suarez and Raisel Iglesias also did their thing without many issues. But, the real standout for the pitching staff as a whole in early-mid May was Didier Fuentes: five appearances, 7 2/3 innings, and four shutdowns recorded, to go with a 29/65/91 line. On the flip side, Tyler Kinley has had a miserable time, Aaron Bummer’s performance hasn’t gotten any better, and Reynaldo Lopez is just uncomfortable in many senses of that word at this point. That trio joins Ritchie and Holmes as the arms at replacement level or below for May so far that are still on the roster; Kinley, Bummer, and Holmes were the only guys to get saddled with negative WPA for this period. (Kinley’s -0.52 WPA was disastrous.)
See you at the end of May — and, as always, if there’s something in particular you do want to see covered here, let me know.
