How the Braves Flipped the NL East Race

You could have been forgiven for giving up the Braves for dead in the water last month. Heading into the July 30 trade deadline, they were 51–52, four games behind the NL East-leading Mets and eight back in the Wild Card race, with four teams between them and the second-slotted Padres. Three weeks earlier, they’d lost their best player, Ronald Acuña Jr., to a season-ending torn ACL, plus they were down last year’s NL home run and RBI leader (Marcell Ozuna), their starting catcher (Travis d’Arnaud), and three key members of their rotation (Ian Anderson, Huascar Ynoa, and Mike Soroka). Yet nearly four weeks later, the division race has been upended, and Atlanta is squarely in the drivers’ seat. What happened?

The short version is that the Braves were aggressive in giving their outfield a much-needed makeover at the deadline and entered Tuesday with an NL-best 17–5 record since then, albeit largely against a soft schedule. Even after their nine-game winning streak came to an end against the Yankees — themselves riding a nine-game winning streak at the time, making for a first-in-120-years matchup — to knock them back to 17–6, a half-game behind the Dodgers, they’ve left the Mets in the dust, as New York has run into buzzsaw after buzzsaw. Here’s the full picture of how the NL East standings and Playoff Odds have changed:

For those who prefer a picture, here you go (this one shows only the division-winning odds):

For the Braves, this run has come the old-fashioned way, as they’ve held their own against the other strong teams and steamrolled the weak ones. They’ve played series against just four teams with a .500 or better record: the Brewers (against whom they lost two of three), Cardinals (whom they swept), Reds (against whom they won two of three), and Yankees (who swept a two-game series) That’s a 6–5 mark against four teams with a weighted winning percentage of .560. Meanwhile, they’ve gone a combined 11–1 against the Nationals (5–1), Marlins (3–0), and Orioles (3–0), teams with a weighted .395 winning percentage. At the same time, the Mets went 3–14 against the Reds (1–2), Phillies (0–3), Dodgers (1–6), and Giants (1-3), four teams with a weighted winning percentage of .592, and 4–3 against the Marlins (1–3) and Nationals (3–0), a pair with a combined winning percentage of .417.

I’ll leave the Mets’ miseries for another day. As for the Braves, Ozuna’s May 29 arrest on charges of aggravated assault strangulation and misdemeanor battery and Acuña’s July 10 ACL tear left the team with Orlando Arcia (a shortstop), Ehire Adrianza, and Abraham Almonte manning the outfield corners and Guillermo Heredia covering center. All of the holdovers have basically stopped hitting since the deadline, but newcomers Joc Pederson (acquired from the Cubs on July 15, when the team was 44–45), Adam Duvall, and Jorge Soler (both acquired on July 30 from the Marlins and Royals, respectively) have done solid to exceptional work. Note that all stats from here on do not include Tuesday night’s game:

Nobody was ever going to replace Acuña, but aside from the surprising contributions of Adrianza and Almonte, which had gone well beyond their previous bodies of work (each with a wRC+ in the low 80s), the Braves were getting very little from their other outfielders. Sure enough, those two players (and Heredia) have all crashed through the floor in limited playing time lately, but the newcomers have stabilized the situation.

Meanwhile, Dansby Swanson has been the majors’ most valuable position player and fourth-best hitter since the deadline, and both Freddie Freeman and Austin Riley have improved upon already-strong showings. And d’Arnaud, who missed over two months with a torn ligament in his left thumb, has finally begun to provide some offense from the catcher’s slot, though it still ranks dead last in the majors with a 48 wRC+:

One thing not captured by this table is the home run totals. Not that the Braves have produced a dramatic uptick; their total of 182 ranks second in the NL, and on both sides of the All-Star break, they’ve been tied for second. What’s of particular interest is that they’re not far off from becoming the second team with all four regular infielders hitting at least 25 homers, joining the 2008 Marlins (Jorge Cantu, Mike Jacobs, Hanley Ramirez, and Dan Uggla); Freeman and Riley both have a team-high 27, Swanson has 25, and Albies has 22. They even have an outside shot at becoming the first infield with all four reaching 30, something those Marlins fell one Cantu homer short of doing; Swanson, who’s projected to hit five more homers, would reach the mark, but Albies, who’s projected for six more, will have to pick up the pace.

Anyway, the Braves improved from scoring a healthy 4.75 runs per game before the deadline to a gaudy 5.59 per game since, with their cumulative batting line improving from .241/.321/.428 (98 wRC+) to .248/.333/.442 (106 wRC+). Meanwhile, they’ve gone from allowing 4.29 runs per game (4.13 ERA, 4.11 FIP) to 3.73 (3.56 ERA, 3.65 FIP), with improvements across the board in their major peripherals: from 1.16 homers per nine to 1.04, from a 23.8% strikeout rate to 25.5%, and from a 9.1% walk rate to 7.3%.

Rotation-wise, Max Fried and Charlie Morton have done the heavy lifting, with just about everybody else along for the ride:

Fried, Morton, and Ynoa, who recently returned after missing three months after fracturing his right hand by punching a dugout bench in frustration, have been very good, but they account for just 10 of the 22 starts by the team in this span. The rest has been pretty crummy in the balance, though we’re talking about a mere 56.1 innings split three ways. If Anderson is able to return from his shoulder inflammation as planned after one more rehab start, Atlanta can afford to figure out whether Muller, Smyly, or Toussaint is the best fit for the fifth spot.

As for the bullpen, it’s seen improvement, too, particularly thanks to deadline addition Richard Rodriguez:

This isn’t a complete listing; I’ve focused on the higher-leverage and/or higher-volume ones. While Smith has had a rough August, the team’s top setup guys (Rodriguez, who was acquired from the Pirates, and Matzek) have been lights out, and likewise for the top middlemen (Jackson, Martin, and Minter). Meanwhile, two relievers who weren’t very effective, Jones and Greene, are long gone, with the former having retired and the latter having recently caught on with the Dodgers. As a group, the bullpen has shaved about three-quarters of a run of ERA off their pre-deadline mark, as well as about half a run of FIP.

In all, that adds up to substantial improvements on both sides of the ball for the Braves. Their run has been fueled by some exceptional work by core players (Swanson, Riley, Freeman, Fried, Morton) with a boost by timely July acquisitions (Pederson, Soler, and Rodriguez), and it’s come at a time when the Mets have had just about everything go wrong. This stretch hasn’t sealed the Braves’ fourth straight division title just yet, but it’s given them enough of a cushion that with 36 games to go, they’re now firmly in command of the NL East.