In sports, there are two ways to win. You can outscore your opponent, or you can keep your opponent from outscoring you. Some will say this amounts to the same thing viewed from differing angles, but that’s not how baseball people see it.
The scoring of runs falls under one heading. Run prevention – the two words constitute an industry buzz-phase – is an entity unto itself. As has been voluminously chronicled, the 2024 Braves haven’t excelled at scoring. They average 4.5 runs per game, way down from last season’s 5.8. They have, however, gotten pretty good at RP.
Braves opponents average 3.8 runs, down from last season’s 4.4. That hitting/scoring is off across MLB has something to do with it, but let’s give the Braves a dollop of credit. The Yankees are second in baseball in runs, averaging a rounded-up 5.0 per game. They just lost a home series to the Braves, scoring 10 runs – 3.3 per game – over the weekend set.
Eight runs came on the night Charlie Morton started. On the days Chris Sale and Max Fried started, the Bronx Bombers managed a total of two runs.
We’ve known for a while that these Braves aren’t last year’s Braves, but this year’s team – it has won eight of 10 – is finding workarounds. It helps that Ozzie Albies and Austin Riley have begun to hit. It helps that Jarred Kelenic has three home runs with an OPS of 1.074 while batting first in the order. (His career OPS is .674.) What helps most is that the Braves have remembered how to pitch.
In 2023, the Braves ranked among MLB’s top seven teams in WAR at seven of the nine non-pitching positions, the exceptions being shortstop and left field. This year’s club has no position save DH – technically not a position, but never mind – among the top four. In non-pitching WAR, the Braves are 14th-best. That they hold MLB’s seventh-best record is due to pitching.
These Braves aren’t knocking down any fences – last year’s team scored in double figures 20 times; this year’s has done it once – but they’re on pace to win 93 games. For playoff qualification purposes, that would more than suffice.
Over 20 June games, opponents have managed more than four runs six times. Over the 11 June starts made by Reynaldo Lopez, Chris Sale and Max Fried, opponents have scored more than four runs once, that on Sale’s start of June 1.
We can gripe that Morton is good once every two or three starts, though he is 40. We can lament the loss of Spencer Strider and the difficulty in finding a No. 5 starter, though Spencer Schwellenbach seems promising. What we need to appreciate is how the Braves are coping without Strider and Ronald Acuña and now without Michael Harris Jr.
A word about Orlando Arcia, who has all but stopped hitting. His batting average in June is .155; his OPS is .464. He has scored four runs over the past 29 games. But if you’re not scoring runs, you’d better be helping prevent them. Arcia ranks sixth among NL players in defensive WAR, and he does man the most important position. And the Braves’ 30 errors mark the fewest among MLB clubs.
This isn’t to suggest that Arcia is Ozzie Smith or that the Braves have returned to the dominance of recent years. A team that struggles to score – though the struggle shows signs of easing – has little margin for error, pun semi-intended. That said, a team that can prevent runs is a team that can win. That’s true in June. It’s also true in October.
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