Braves Biweekly: even better in late April

I’m continuing the irresponsibility of the grayshaded, per-600 PA column. Hitter-wise, the second half of April was driven by Michael Harris II’s insane, beyond-video-game-numbers line, along with legitimately good performance from Ozzie Albies (along with overperforming said performance by an insane amount), along with Olson and Drake Baldwin. No one else really helped all that much. The struggles of Austin Riley and Mike Yastrzemski were actively detrimental to the cause. For the season as a whole, it’s that same quartet driving the proverbial bus, though Mauricio Dubon and Dominic Smith continue to maintain good lines largely based on what they did earlier in April. Matt Olson has played like an MVP from basically MVP-on; in addition to his actual production, he was fourth in MLB in WPA in April’s second half, and is fourth *again* for the month as a whole. The timing of Olson’s contributions might overshadow Drake Baldwin’s similar production for some, but not for us, right? That said, Olson is pretty clearly the Braves’ MVP for April — he had a huge game nearly half the time, and if the season ended today, he might very well be the NL MVP, as his 1.7 fWAR is the league’s highest (and fourth in MLB, with two other guys just fractions ahead of him and behind Yordan Alvarez’ 2.2). The following chart is just for the second half of April. It was a month of justice in this regard. Harris’ insane two weeks made this chart stupid. More broadly — do you find this chart useful? I won’t include it if it doesn’t help relative to the table above.

Here’s the same chart, but for the month as a whole.

The only thing I’ll add to this is that Riley struggling is kinda brutal in and of itself, but when you combine that with his uncanny ability to draw the WPA vortex upon himself, well… not much has gone wrong for the Braves, but that definitely has. Mauricio Dubon is also having a WPA vortex-y month, where he’s come up what feels like an inordinate amount in key spots. He was getting lucky with bloops and such earlier, but his WPA has taken a beating over the last few weeks as they haven’t fallen in those same big spots.

The pitching situation continues to be fluid, so sample sizes wreak havoc on the ability to say much of use here every two weeks.

Bryce Elder’s topline looks great because he’s not getting killed by HR/FB. That said, this was not a great two weeks of actual pitching for him, and unless you think he’s suddenly immune to getting blasted into a higher HR/FB again, you should prepare for his numbers to take a tumble. Chris Sale had a much more Sale-like two weeks compared to early April. Grant Holmes did not have a fun time in late April. He probably needs to improve fairly quickly in May before the Braves go in a different direction in the rotation and he fixes the team’s “we have no one we like to pitch longer-stint middle relief” issue that Didier Fuentes has been conscripted into managing for some reason. I’m loathe to talk about even smaller-sample performances among relievers, but for April as a whole… Reynaldo Lopez was removed from the rotation after not pitching well. We’ll see what he does with a different role. Jose Suarez is an enigma with a great FIP-, an okay xFIP-, and a horrid WPA. This will probably work itself out, by which I mean, “he will be removed from the roster.” I can see why the Braves were so interested in keeping him around, but I am guessing their patience will run out before he manages to get the consistency to not blow up the game with a spate of walks each time out, even if he’s striking out the side while doing so. Dylan Lee is f’n awesome and is barely outside the top five in reliever fWAR right now. I don’t know if this is in the cards, but with how much the Braves like to spend on relievers, maybe they could give him a modest extension rather than just dumping the same resources into someone else in a later offseason. Tyler Kinley continues to pitch in a weird way that warrants its own post, but it hasn’t hurt the team so far. He’s another thing that could have gone terribly and really ruined this excellent month for the team, but things have worked out for the best so far. Robert Suarez has *not* been an expensive reliever contract that’s blown up in their faces — he’s basically done what they were hoping for when giving him all that moola. And then there’s Aaron Bummer, who is really delivering on “May you get what you wish for” this year. He’s being used in high leverage! Unfortunately, he’s a complete mess in the early going. Maybe he’s just aged out of effectiveness. Maybe it’s related to him missing time with arm issues last year. Either way, it’s a cruel twist of fate. See you in two weeks! Again, if you have stuff you *do* want to see in these, or stuff you *don’t*, let me know and I’ll think about it.