The Yankees are ready to leave Thursday’s embarrassing loss against the Orioles behind them and will now take on the Braves in a three-game series. As you probably might remember, the 2023 Braves were simply awesome. They won the most games in MLB with 104, and their offense tied the 2019 Twinssingle-season record for most home runs for a team, with 307. Another NLDS loss to the Phillies stung, but there was no reason to think that Atlanta would falter in 2024 with so much young talent under contract.
These Braves, however, aren’t nearly as productive at the plate. For starters, they lost their best player, Ronald Acuña Jr., to another torn ACL, derailing his season just as it did in 2021. Many of their All-Star-caliber players have struggled to this point—including Acuña before the injury— and they are seven games behind those frontrunning Phils in the NL East.
By wRC+, Atlanta is 14th with a 102 mark as of Thursday. There has been a steep decline from last year, when they led the league with a brilliant 125 mark. For context, that was a step up from even the 117 wRC+ of the fantastic World Series champion 2009 Yankees, which featured Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and more.
This year’s edition ranks 13th in batting average (.246), 17th in OBP (.309) and eighth in slugging percentage (.408). The power has been there for the most part (albeit not at last season’s levels), but on-base skills have sharply declined. Since April 24th, the Braves rank 28th out of 30 MLB teams with 187 runs scored, which is baffling considering the incredible collection of talent they have even without Acuña.
