The Atlanta Braves Should Dominate MLB for Years to Come

the Atlanta Braves are just an absolute wagon and it's looking like they're not gonna get stopped anytime soon at the time of recording this the Braves are currently the top team in MLB with a 61 and 30 record but from June 1st to July 15th they've been just unreal they started June at 33 and 23 which means that during this run they've gone 28 and 7 which is an 800 winning percentage and over a full season that would have them on Pace for just under 130 wins now that's obviously not sustainable and over their last seven games they've come back down to earth a bit and gone four and three but just how dominant they've been during this run is absolutely ridiculous during this time they've been first in all of baseball in batting average on base percentage slugging percentage Ops and WRC plus buy a lot as a team right as a team they slash 295 360 549 with a 910 Ops good for a 141 WRC Plus as a team I I feel like I've said that enough to make that clear because that's just wild to put this in perspective their team WRC plus would be tied with Corbin Carroll who's currently 11th in the major leagues and their Ops is just a bit higher than his 905 LPS right now so during this run on average this entire lineup has hit as good if not a little bit better than Corbin Carroll Ronald Acuna Jr Matt Olson Sean Murphy Eddie Rosario Ozzy Albee's Travis Dar no Michael Harris II and Marcelo Zuna have all had ops's over 850 and WRC plus is 129 or higher during their run so the Braves lineup has had eight hitters in it that have been at least about a 30 percent better hitter than League average and you still have Austin Riley and Orlando arcia in there who are both All-Stars too at the top Acuna had an Ops of 1.073 hit 12 home runs and stole 20 bases and Olson also had an Ops over a thousand with a 1.008 Ops hitting 13 homers too the Braves also LED MLB in home runs with 82 19 more than the second place team and led the league in run scored with 231 32 more than the next team they've been able to put up these kinds of numbers because they've been hitting damn near everything really well leading the league in hard contact over this stretch and cutting down on the easy outs with the fifth best soft contact percentage as well which is why even though they actually haven't been hitting too many balls in the air when they do they make it count by once again being first in homers per Fly ball at 22.6 percent over five and a half percent higher than the second place team and a big reason why they've been able to just absolutely Crush baseballs like this is because they've been taking some of the best at-bats of any team in the league ninth in walk percentage but second in strikeout percentage and walks per strikeout so they've been making opposing pitchers just work to try to get them out and as soon as they make a mistake the Braves make them pay for it but now speaking of pitching this gets us to the other part of the Braves where the two sides of their pitching staff have been a little bit night and day the starters have been 15th in Era during this time but 24th in Fielding independent pitching and I'll get to one of the biggest problems for them here in a second that some of you are probably already thinking of their main struggle has been giving up the long ball where they've been 27th in home runs and 29th in homers per Fly ball which has them with the 23rd ranked slugging percentage allowed of any starting rotation so mainly these starters are just getting crushed way too often but other than that they haven't allowed too many base runners still in the middle third of the league and average allowed walk percentage and whip and they were 13th in strikeout percentage but you can thank Quadzilla here for a lot of that speaking of the man the myth the mustache Spencer strider's been doing his thing here with an insane 35.5 strikeout rate but he's put up a 4.6 era despite a 3-4-15 in eight games mainly from giving up a 257 average and 1.5 homers per nine both of these the highest of their three main starters during this time now out of those other two Charlie mortens put up a 272 era and a 358 fit in eight games striking out 27.4 percent of the batters that he faced and allowing a 223 average in .8 homers per nine but he has been walking guys at a 10 clip and Bryce Elder hasn't had quite the same success that he had earlier in the season that's my bad for making a video talking about how good he was doing he put up a 469 era and a 529 FIP over seven games during this stretch we know he's not a strikeout guy so is 14.2 percent K rate isn't that surprising but his walk percentage over the stretch was a bit above League average at 8.9 and for a guy that really relies on command and pitching to contact he really needs to get that back down then around these three the Braves have had to shuffle in some guys and have found very little success with this outside of Colby Allard who had a 279 era and a 297 fifth in two games but AJ Smith shover had a 502 era and a 740 fit in three games Dylan Dodd had an 11-2-5 era and 14.28 fit in his one game Jared Schuster had a 502 era and a 517 fit in three games and I'm so happy for him to see Michael Soroka finally back from all his injuries but he had a 502 era and a 698 fit in his three games during this run and a big reason why the Braves have had to shuffle around the rotation so much and and really struggled here recently has been Kyle Wright and Max free to both spent time on the 60-day IL right out with a strange shoulder and freed with a strained forearm but free did start a rehab assignment on July 9th so hopefully we see him back here pretty soon so with the rotation having the problems that it's had here recently the Braves have really had to rely on their Bullpen and they've gotten more than they could have hoped for out of these guys during this stretch their Bullpen has been first in Era at 2-3-8 almost 0.5 higher than the next team and also first in FIP at 3.08 with the next team at 3-2-2 the Bullpen has led the league in getting K's with the best strikeout percentage while also being fifth in walk percentage so just attacking hitters and keeping them to the second lowest average allowed and the third lowest homers per nine so just all around dominant by just going at hitter so much they've kept opposing lineups from being able to square them up with the the third lowest hard contact percentage so even though they've been the worst Bullpen at getting ground balls hitters aren't putting up numbers against them because they haven't been able to drive the ball really at all against these guys closer ryzel Iglesias had a 378 era which was the highest of any of their relievers by the way and a 352 fit in 17 games getting hit around a bit with a 277 average allowed and 1.6 homers per nine but struck out 32.4 percent of batters while also only walking 4.4 then AJ Minter in 17 games had a 184 era and a 2-5-3 fit striking out 34.6 percent of the batters that he faced with a 125 average but he did go on the 15-day IL July 12th with shoulder inflammation but the Braves also had Ben Heller Colin McHugh Joe Jimenez and Nick Anderson put up eras under three in at least 10 games so this Bullpen has been lights out and one of the deepest in baseball and now this is where I feel like I have to clarify some things from the video that I made about the Braves before the season started the first of which is that now I know how to pronounce Travis darno's name right thanks to your 50 000 comments about it gotta make one mistake because my stupid brain just goes I know how to pronounce that name I don't need double checking you can't let that go I'm never forgetting that guy's name again but now a lot of people commented on that video that the Braves aren't a dynasty yet and I thought I explained my stance in that other video but apparently I didn't do that very well so that's my bad this is what I think by the definition of the word are the Braves a dynasty at this moment no I agree with a lot of you that they have to win at least another world series here soon to really cement themselves as a dynasty but the point I was trying to make that I didn't do a very good job of narrowing down into a catchy enough YouTube title and that's probably where most of the confusion was which like sorry but I kind of have to play the whole YouTube game here with that I could have said potential Dynasty but didn't think that was gonna work as well and then by the time I realized that's what I definitely should have said it was way too late but my point was go ahead and look across Major League Baseball and tell me another team that's in a better position to win multiple World Series over the next five to ten years I'll wait Austin Riley is 26 and can be here through 2033 at 21.2 million aav Matt Olson is 29 and can be here through 2030 at 21 million Ronald Acuna Jr is 25 and can be here through 2028 at 12 and a half million God that's a steal Spencer Strider is 24 and can be here through 2029 at 12 and a half million Sean Murphy's 28 and can be here through 2029 at 12.16 million Michael Harris II is 22 and can be here through 2032 at 9 million and Ozzy albis is 26 and can be here through 2027 at 5 million let alone you still have Max Reed with another year of arbitration and both Kyle Wright and Bryce Elder haven't even hit arbitration yet so the Braves still have time to sign those guys to long-term deals then even with all of this money that they have committed to these guys the Braves came into this season with the 8 highest payroll so they still have plenty of flexibility especially with all of the club options that they have across this roster this is one of if not the most talented rosters in baseball with an amazing young Corps of players that are basically all signed long term for what most people would probably say is less than market value the Braves are going to be one of if not the best teams in baseball year in and year out for at least the next five to ten years and there isn't a damn thing that anyone except the baseball Gods can do about it this organization has done probably the best job that I can think of since I snapped into baseball consciousness of identifying and developing Talent structuring their roster and locking in their players at the exact right times for the exact right price they may not be a dynasty right now but I'm gonna shoot my shot on this and say that this team's gonna be the dynasty of this ERA in baseball and if they aren't they're either gonna be the unluckiest team ever or the biggest chokers bust whatever you want to call them maybe of all time so no pressure but let me know what you guys think about all this comment below how good of the Braves been how good are they going to be and for how long and am I being absolutely crazy with all this or is this the best run organization that we've seen in a long time God I've been trying to put off talking about this team for a while but that comment section and the Braves themselves have just forced my hand on this don't forget to like And subscribe if you enjoyed the video it helps the channel out a bunch and you get to see more baseball content like this when we put out new videos on Wednesdays and Sundays go ahead and check out the video that's on your screen now to see how MLB's new rule changes impacted the game in the first half of this season compared to last season and as always thank you so much for watching have an awesome day I'm getting out of here

Channel: Smartr Baseball

Views: 19,340

Keywords: braves, mlb, baseball, mlb highlights, atlanta braves, baseball highlights, braves highlights, ronald acuña jr, spencer strider, matt olson, travis d'arnaud, austin riley, sean murphy, kyle wright, bryce elder, max fried, michael harris ii, atlanta braves highlights, mlb atlanta braves highlights, braves season highlights, matt olson braves home run, braves highlights mlb, atl braves, atlanta braves news, strider braves, mlb 2023, mlb season 2023, major league baseball

Id: giG1rIyIZHQ

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023