Braves Biweekly: so far, so good through mid-April

Alright, enough text.

It’s a little irresponsible to include that last column, hence the grayscale, but I wanted to keep it to show how these will change over time. The trio of Drake Baldwin, Matt Olson, and Dominic Smith are killing the ball, with results even better than their inputs. Mauricio Dubon is almost there, but his inputs are notably worse — though much improved from when he was just getting a bunch of hits with almost no oomph very early in the season. Actually, let’s do a different view:

This should be fairly self-explanatory, but in case it isn’t, bubble size is scaled based on PAs so far. Really, three things to note here beyond much of the team raking: Mike Yastrzemski is sad, Ozzie Albies is lucky, and Michael Harris II is unlucky. Only one player (Josh Naylor), has both more PAs than Harris, and a bigger xwOBA underperformance. Harris’ inputs are fairly close to say, Olson’s — but their outputs so far are worlds apart. On the flip side, only Yandy Diaz has more PAs than Albies and a bigger overperformance (though a lot of guys are close in terms of PAs and overperformance). It’s not weird to have these sorts of things be true for any few-week stretch, but Albies has a history of overperformance and Harris has a history of underperformance so… watch this space? Context-less stats are all well and good, but these guys are playing games where they come up in specific situations. We all know about Smith’s heroics — his 1.12 WPA so far is actually seventh in MLB among position players right now. His game-winning double against the Marlins resulted in the third-highest WPA game for a batter so far this season. That said, I also want to give a shoutout to Olson, who currently leads the team with six games with a WPA above .06. He hasn’t had that huge hit yet, but his consistent production has made big hits unnecessary in many games, as well. And, of course, there’s Austin Riley, whose challenges with the WPA vortex are well-documented at this point. I won’t dwell on it too long, but Riley’s -0.78 WPA is just barely outside the bottom ten in baseball right now, with the biggest insult layered on top of insult coming from the fact that his worst WPA game so far was supposed to be a day off, and instead he ate -0.18 WPA after coming in late and making two outs in key situations.

We’re very much in small sample land here:

Bryce Elder has been killing it. Chris Sale was killed in one start, so his through-four-starts line is very un-Sale-like. Grant Holmes and Reynaldo Lopez are somewhat concerning, but it’s only been a few outings, and maybe they find their footing — they were both better in their most recent starts, despite the Marlins sprinkling BABIP all over their box score lines. Still, each of these guys have had positive WPA so far (in large part thanks to the stellar defense behind them) — even if Elder is the unquestionable rotation MVP of these first few games of the season. I’m not going to bother with reliever stuff at this point because, well, the bullpen innings leader right now is Osvaldo Bido, who just got DFAed. That said, I do want to note that Raisel Iglesias is currently *second* on the team among pitchers in fWAR with 0.4 — a far cry from his terrible start that kind of doomed the Braves before they ever got going last year. He’s been nearly perfect, and has four of the team’s ten shutdowns (which is a relief appearance with +.06 WPA or more). Among the “steady” relievers that are expected to stay on the roster, only Aaron Bummer has had a rocky start, but we’re still talking just like five innings here. Anyway, that’s what I got. What else would you like to see (or not see) in future biweekly updates (remember: that means every two weeks here!)?