Hey, the Atlanta Braves won a game! Not just one, either: Nine of them, while you were off oiling your disgusting mustache. Nine of 15, in fact. Over the weekend they won their second series of the season, sweeping the visiting Minnesota Twins, and then Monday they triumphed in a rousing 7-6 effort against the dreaded St. Louis Cardinals. After a hateful start to the season that saw the Braves get wiped out in consecutive road series against the cream of the National League West, they have started to get healthy, literally and figuratively, against the merely human, and are on the move.
Their latest win was a fun one. Braves hitters had a normal amount of trouble across six innings against St. Louis starter Erick Fedde, plating a pair of runs in the third on an Austin Riley sockdolager but otherwise looking generally punchless. This is both because Fedde is good and because Atlanta’s offense—even while managing to outscore opponents more often than not since opening week—has not yet hit its stride. With the Cardinals up a run in the bottom of the eighth, a hard-chugging Riley beat out an infield single, and two batters later Matt Olson drove him home with a single through the right side. A walk and a sacrifice fly put the Braves up a run and brought Sean Murphy to the plate. Murphy’s power bat has been everything the Braves could’ve hoped for since returning from injury, and he came up huge in this spot, leveling a mighty rip at a meatball of a first-pitch changeup from Cardinals reliever JoJo Romero and crushing a three-run dinger to left. Atlanta’s bullpen tried to blow the lead but could not, and today the very same Braves who opened the season 0–7 are sitting on a four-game win streak.
The Braves still are not the powerhouse team they’re expected to be at full strength, and things might continue to look funky for a little while, at least until Ronald Acuña Jr. is back and anchoring the lineup. They presently rank below league average in most hitting metrics, including batting average and OPS, and without Acuña’s juice, they also aren’t action-y on the bases. They’ve had the 10th-fewest at-bats with runners in scoring position so far this season, and have produced the seventh-worst batting average in those chances. That’s tough sledding for a would-be contender; the formula for success would seem to absolutely require shutdown pitching. Hilariously, the Braves also have not gotten that: Their starters have pitched to a 3–8 record and the fourth-worst WHIP in baseball, and their bullpen has been solidly average pretty much across the board.
But the offense, at least, is showing signs. Marcell Ozuna has been terrific, and currently ranks fourth in the National League in Adjusted OPS+, per Baseball Reference; Murphy, who was activated on April 8, has socked five dongs in 11 games. Olson’s OPS is up to .784 after a slow start; Michael Harris II has six hits and a dinger over Atlanta’s winning streak. Their vibes are improving as good things compound. I am doing a truly regrettable Morpheus voice as I say this: They are starting to believe. “I think the biggest thing we take from this is confidence, confidence that it’s in there,” Riley said, after Monday’s big rally and victory. “We just got to keep plugging away. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
The vibes are not perfect. Jarred Kelenic, who stinks so bad, screwed up on the bases Saturday, pausing long enough to admire a ball he’d cranked to deep right field that he was then thrown out at second base on what should’ve been a standup double. Braves manager Brian Snitker dismissively passed on an opportunity to comment on Kelenic’s mistake after the game; Acuña, who was once famously benched and publicly scolded by Snitker for literally that exact same mistake, posted and later deleted a tweet that read, “If it were me, they would take me out of the game.” As pointed out by Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Snitker has in the past made a public show of benching three different players for similar instances of inadequate hustle, including, in Acuña and Ozuna, his team’s most productive hitters. Absent an adequate explanation from Snitker, it’s a little bit too easy to notice that Kelenic is the one of these perpetrators who is white.
It’s sort of darkly funny to watch the Braves stack own-goals just as their season is getting back on track. Snitker claimed not to have seen Kelenic’s baserunning boo-boo in realtime, and then claimed not to have seen Acuña’s tweet, and then claimed to have discussed the situation with the former but not the latter. But then Kelenic, who has been appropriately contrite in media sessions, said that it was he, and not Snitker, who initiated their little accountability session. The neverending news cycle tends to draw one’s attention to the fundamental silliness of the underlying crime—Kelenic thought he’d socked a home run in a game that the Braves eventually won—but then you’re left to apply that same judgment to Snitker’s previous heavy-handed response to players committing this particular sin. The Braves very much do not want to be talking about this, but this distraction was home-brewed by a goofball of a fourth outfielder, a flip-flopping disciplinarian, and a shelved and restless MVP who, however righteously you might disapprove of his timing, is certainly not wrong.
Also—and I realize this is an awkward transition—the Braves are not yet out of injury hell. Spencer Strider, the 26-year-old ace of their pitching staff, has pitched five total innings this season, after missing the bulk of last season due to a second UCL injury in his pitching arm. Strider pitched well in his lone start of this season, on April 18, but was returned to the injured list Monday after straining a hamstring while playing catch. Also, starter Reynoldo López, who was key to Atlanta staying afloat during their impossibly injury-fucked 2024 campaign, is out indefinitely with inflammation in his throwing shoulder, with the Braves saying only that they are hopeful that he will pitch at some point this season.
So this is a team that will be treading water for a little while. Unlike in the case of certain other scuffling would-be contenders, the cavalry may, in fact, be en route. A healthy and productive Acuña is among the best possible midseason offensive additions, and a healthy and in-form Strider is among the best possible midseason additions for a pitching staff. In the meantime, for the Braves to stay afloat, they’ll need more of the timely hitting and clutch situational play and excellent pitching that they, uhh, largely have not gotten to date. Listen. Somehow they have conjured enough mojo to avert what was shaping up to be a catastrophic first month, and if the hobbled Braves can stay attached just a little longer in a competitive NL East, there’s a good chance things will turn rosy soon enough. Good health tends to improve performance, and good performance tends to lift a team in the standings. Good vibes should follow.