Quick – which MLB team has the fewest home runs this season? Well, if you read the title of this post, you can presume the Atlanta Braves are the correct answer. And you’d be right! The Braves have homered just three times this year. The Pirates and Angels rank right above the Braves with seven homers apiece, while the Rockies lead baseball with 26. But just how absurd is this lack of power for the Braves? Let’s take a look.
While the Braves only have three homers this year, two of them came on Opening Day. That means that in the team’s next 14 games, they’ve homered just one time. That homer came on April 10th by Drew Stubbs against the Cardinals. It’s the lone extra base hit Stubbs has recorded this season.
Freddie Freeman and Adonis Garcia were the two Braves to homer on Opening Day against the Nationals. They each have added just one double to their tally of extra base hits since.
No Braves hitter has tripled, which isn’t surprising (four teams haven’t tripled this year). What *is* surprising is that Nick Markakis has already notched nine doubles this year, leading the league in that category. Of course, only one other Braves hitter has as many as three doubles – shortstop Erick Aybar. Even with the nine doubles Markakis has recorded this year, Atlanta ranks 18th in the majors with 24 doubles. The Red Sox lead the league with 39, and the Yankees are last in baseball with 17.
Atlanta’s isolated power (slugging percentage – batting average) is .066, last in baseball and a whopping 20 points behind the second-worst team, the Angels. To put that .066 mark in perspective, only one qualified player in baseball had an ISO that low last season – Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar. The Braves, as a team, have hit for as much power this season as Alcides Escobar did last year.
But going back to the home runs for a minute, 32 players this season have hit more than the Braves’ three, and another 28 players have matched their total.
Three pitchers, Jake Arrieta, Madison Bumgarner, and Kenta Maeda, have homered this season, and all would be tied for the Braves team lead. Atlanta’s pitchers, on the other hand, have a total of two hits in 32 plate appearances.
Backup catcher Tyler Flowers leads the Braves with a .364 batting average in seven games, and doesn’t have an extra base hit. Aybar, who is hitting .158/.183/.211 this season, is second on the team with three extra base hits.
And if you’re curious as to whether or not the Braves offense is doing other things well to balance out the lack of power – they’re not. Only the Phillies have a worse batting average than Atlanta’s .218 mark. The team’s .302 on base percentage ranks 22nd in baseball. Seven stolen bases on the year puts the Braves in a four-way tie for 13th in the majors. A 21.6% strikeout rate is right in the middle of the league, ranking 15th. In a rare bit of competency, the Braves do have the fifth-highest walk rate in baseball at 9.6%.
All of that adds up to a total of 54 runs on the season, 23rd in baseball. 26 of those runs came in the Braves’ four wins this year. They’ve scored 28 runs in total over their 11 losses.
The Braves will play their next 13 games against the Mets, Red Sox, and Cubs, with eight of those games coming on the road. Boston’s pitching has struggled this year, but the Mets and Cubs have been dominant, as expected. Good luck, Braves – that offense might not be getting any better over the next two weeks.
