The best team in the majors has been uncharacteristically grounded in the early going

Hello! It’s April 19, 2024, and the Braves have the best record in the majors. You’re probably not surprised, because it’s not actually surprising when the team projected to be the best in the majors… is the best in the majors. Right?

If you’re not surprised by that, there are some other things you won’t be surprised by, too. For example, I know you’re not surprised by the fact that the Braves currently have a top three xwOBA and xwOBACON, a top five barrel rate. And I definitely know that the fact that the Braves are first in hard-hit rate and average exit velocity is, at this point, pretty boring to you. Aw, hell, have a table of stuff you already know.

And yet, something might feel off. Whether that feeling is justified is hard to say with certainty — last year, the Braves took 47.5 percent of their PAs when already leading, and this year it’s about 45.6 percent, so that’s not it. Nor is it the sheer runs total, as they’re second in that mark this year, and in first by a mile in terms of runs per game. After all, last year’s legendary offensive season had the team finish with a 125 wRC+, and they’re at 131 right now. No, if anything, it’s something much more specific: namely, the squad is “just” 13th in homer total, after they tied the MLB record and blew the rest of the league away last year. The last time they finished outside the top 10? 2018, before the current “murder the ball” strategy really took hold in Atlanta.

So, where did the homers go?

The Scourge of Grounderitis

Grounderitis. You know about it. I know about it. I hate it. Do you hate it? You should.

Let’s do another table, one that will summarize this whole adventure.

From 2019-2022, the Braves had a clear plan in terms of how to hit the ball (in the air). The worst you could say about their amazing 2023 offensive season was that they were fairly balanced. And then, we come to our three weeks of 2024 so far, and we have a column full of very woofy woof. Third in groundball rate? What in the world is going on here? 24th in fly ball rate? Who even are these guys?

Who’s responsible? Well, we can look at it this way.

Basically: thanks, Matt Olson! You’ve apparently been inoculated against grounderitis. As for Michael Harris II, Travis d’Arnaud, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Ozzie Albies — please seek appropriate medical attention, stat. (For context, the league generally hits a grounder on 43ish percent of its balls in play.)

So, that’s what it takes to turn a team from reasonably healthy to virulently ill: two guys without grounder concerns (d’Arnaud/Sean Murphy and Albies) to suddenly become highly symptomatic, and two more guys that weren’t particularly hale in this regard (Harris and Acuña) to take a turn for the worse.

But Wait, We Feel Just Fine!

So, why isn’t this dooming the Braves? If grounders produce, on average, a .230 wOBA, while non-grounders produce, on average, a wOBA well north of .450, how are the Braves still killing it in terms of xwOBA, runs, and wins? To be clear, it’s not walks and strikeouts, as the Braves are 24th in walk rate and 18th in strikeout rate — they are definitely putting the ball in play, a lot.

Well, this too might be obvious, but the short answer is that when they do (rarely) hit a non-grounder, they really hit it.

Specifically, the Braves have an absurd .544 xwOBA on non-grounders. If you take pop-ups out of the equation, it becomes .618. They are the only team with an above-.600 xwOBA on liners plus fly balls, and one of only two teams with a wOBA above .600 (an absurd .679). Their average fly ball or liner is hard-hit (95+ mph), and they’re the only team in the majors for whom that’s true (but the Orioles are pretty close).

(There was a point earlier in the week where the gap between them and second place on non-grounder xwOBA was as big as the gap between the second-place team and the 13th-place team, but that’s not true anymore. Things change so quickly in April.)

Oh, and some good fortune doesn’t hurt, either. After seemingly multiple years where “just wait for the wOBA-xwOBA to normalize” was a needed panacea for occasional early-season struggles, the Braves currently have the largest favorable wOBA-xwOBA gap in baseball. Grounderitis stings a little less when you’re more likely to have those balls sneak through, and to their own credit, the Braves do hit the hardest grounders in baseball, as well.

That wOBA-xwOBA gap will probably shrink a fair bit going forward, but the good news is that the Braves should be well-suited to actually cut down on some of those excessive grounder rates, which should make the sting of losing the Baseball Gods’ favor a little easier to bear.

It’s the Denominator, Stupid

So, at this point, it’s pretty self-evident why the Braves are 13th in homers: they just aren’t hitting enough fly balls. Unsurprisingly, they still have an elevated HR/FB rate, because, well, they absolutely cream the ball when they hit it. But they’ve also hit the fifth-fewest fly balls in baseball. If they hit fly balls at even their not-particularly-high 2023 rate instead of their pitiful 24 rate, applying their current 2024 HR/FB, they’d have two more dingers already, which would push them to a tie for eighth, despite playing fewer games than all but one of the teams above them in that measure.

The Prognosis isn’t Terminal

And finally, some good news — the grounderitis is already improving.

• First week: third-highest (48.5%)
• Second week: ninth-highest (45.3%)
• Third week (so far): tenth-highest (46.4%)

So, there’s work to be done, but really the Braves are still pockmarked by their extreme grounderitis from their first seven games or so, moreso than anything else. They’re not fully over it, as their grounder rate in the Houston series was even higher than in that first week, so it continues to be an uneven recovery. But, the sample is too limited to fret, and after all, they’re still thriving.

To me, the main message here is not that the Braves have a (Capital “P”) Problem, but rather, that if not for the grounderitis, they’d be completely destroying the opposition, instead of “just” having the best offense and best record in baseball. But, still, quit hitting grounders, y’all.