Breaking Down the Unlucky Start to Braves Matt Olson's Season

The Atlanta Braves first baseman hasn't actually done much wrong, yet very little is going right for him

Olson is joins the club on unlucky starts to season | Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images

If you’ve heard anyone discuss the offensive woes of the Atlanta Braves, raise your hand. Among those struggling is one who was a focal point of the woes last season, first baseman Matt Olson. 

While he’s had no trouble reaching base (.400 on-base percentage), nothing has gone right for him when his bat leaves his shoulders. He’s batting .143 and is slugging .214. He has two total hits and one extra-base hit. It’s been brutal in the early efforts to return to All-Star form. 

Before you start the usual complaints about how the Braves downgraded at first base and whatnot, pump the breaks and look beyond the surface-level stats. 

It’s going to take going beyond OPS+ or WAR. Those are being dragged down too. 

First, we’ll look at two more traditional stats: walk and strikeout rates. Olson has earned a free pass in nearly one-third of his plate appearances. If he manages to keep this up all season, he’d blow away his career bests out of the water. Along with that, his strikeout rate has been only 15% - well below his career average of 23.7%.

He’s seeing the ball well and has had good pitch selection. So it comes down to how he’s hitting it, perhaps. Well, no, it actually isn’t that, either. 

According to Baseball Savant, his barrel percentage is 23.7, his average exit velocity is 96.7 mph and his hard hit percentage is 63.6%. All of these are above average for him. He should be doing more with these rates. Is expected slugging is .644 and his expected batting average is .225. The latter isn’t impressive either, but it’s still 80 points better than his current average. Meanwhile, his expected slugging is over 400 points higher. 

So there is a high level of unlucky trips to the plate occurring. 

A lot of these hard-hit balls have gone into the ground and have been unable to find a hole. There has been a low level of line drives compared to what we are used to seeing out of Olson. His line drive rate is 9.1% so far this season, and it’s normally over 20%. 

In theory, that’s got to start changing eventually, right? It’s been discussed that rookie catcher Drake Baldwin has been down on his luck. Olson can join the club. 

The Braves better hope their fortunes begin to change soon. With a historically poor start, they might already be running out of time to turn this around.