An Uppercut Blow to the Braves’ Offense

In 2023, the Braves didn’t just lead the league in basically every offensive category, they posted historic numbers. They followed up that performance with a more middle-of-the-pack showing in 2024. Some of that downturn can be classified as regression to the mean, while some of it was definitely injury-related, with key contributors such as Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy, and Austin Riley missing large chunks of the season. Moving forward, those theories imply that a healthy Braves lineup should perform somewhere in between their historically great 2023 and their exceptionally mediocre 2024. So far, however, the 2025 Braves have posted a gaunt 82 wRC+ as a team, creating anxiety that 2024 wasn’t just an unlucky draw from the low end of the range of possible outcomes, but rather something representative of a new normal, an indication that the range of possible outcomes in Atlanta has shifted downward. Of course, it’s too early to say for sure, especially since Acuña hasn’t made his 2025 debut, but batted ball and swing data, as well as changes in opponent pitching strategy, may offer insight into how pitchers have regained the upper hand when facing the Braves’ lineup.

If the extreme discrepancy in outcomes between 2023 and 2024 really was just variation within the error bars around Atlanta’s true talent level, then we’d expect to observe some amount of luck (good or bad) in their batted ball outcomes, which would lead their expected stats to diverge from their actual numbers, but the table below indicates their expected stats align pretty closely with reality:

Instead, we can begin to understand the difference in production by comparing the quality and frequency of Atlanta’s contact. In 2024, the Braves made less contact overall. They walked less; they struck out more. And when they did make contact, their average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and barrel rate tell us that they didn’t hit the ball as hard or as cleanly as in the past. Their fly ball rate and increased average launch angle indicate they hit more balls in the air. Generally that’s a good thing, but an increase paired with diminished production prompts a closer inspection of the distribution of launch angles that led to the uptick in the overall average, since at some point, higher launch angles just mean easily fieldable fly outs. Using Baseball Savant’s launch angle classifications, the table below shows that the 2024 Braves hit the desirable middle band of launch angles at roughly the same rates as the 2023 Braves, while the increase in their average launch angle is due to topping the ball less and getting under the ball more:

Going from topping the ball to getting under it is trading one flavor of bad for another. That on its own doesn’t explain the overall drop-off in production, but it might indicate a shift in how opposing pitchers approach their matchups with Atlanta’s hitters. First, let’s look at the distribution of pitch types seen by the Braves lineup:

No major shift in approach there. But what if we layer in location? To track down changes leading to getting under the ball more, we can narrow our focus to vertical location. I’ll spare you the information overload of a 40-row table of pitch type/location combos and just highlight the most notable year-over-year differences. In 2024, the Braves saw more fastballs (both four-seamers and sinkers) and changeups in the upper third of the zone. Meanwhile, sliders and splitters (pitches that do tend to be aimed lower) shifted further down and out of the zone completely. And though the magnitude of the changes only amounts to a shift in location for around 5% of the 20,000 to 25,000 pitches thrown to a lineup in a given season, it also represents a departure from how pitchers approach other teams in the league. Last year, Braves hitters were more likely to see fastballs up in the zone and sliders below the zone than their peers on other teams, but in 2023 the opposite was true.

Correspondingly, the Braves’ runs above average per 100 pitches seen, broken down by pitch type, indicates that their largest dips in performance from 2023 to 2024 came on four-seamers, sinkers, and sliders:

So what prompted pitchers to throw more pitches that either aim for the top of the zone or miss the bottom of the zone as they break downward? The answer might be linked to the predominant swing path of the hitters in Atlanta’s lineup. One element of Statcast’s bat tracking data that doesn’t yet feature prominently on a player’s Baseball Savant page, but that does come through in the FanGraphs database, is attack angle. This measures the angle of the hitter’s bat relative to the ground as it makes contact with the ball. So a positive attack angle indicates the hitter is swinging up into the ball, while a negative attack angle means the hitter is chopping down at the ball. The average attack angle for a Braves hitter in 2024 was 1.15 degrees, tied with the Cubs for third highest in the league, behind only the Red Sox at 1.20 degrees and the Mariners at 2.02 degrees. (The league average attack angle last year sat at 0.13 degrees.) This tells us the Braves have a thing for hitters with uppercut swings.

An uppercut swing is not inherently good or bad, and it certainly carries less of a stigma than it did 10 or more years ago. Before we could so precisely quantify the expected value of fly balls relative to groundballs and strike outs relative to other types of outs, conventional wisdom vilified the uppercut swing because it brought an increased rate of swing-and-miss and therefore led to more strikeouts. But it also improved the hitter’s ability to hit the ball in the air, so now that we know just how much more valuable a fly ball tends to be compared to a groundball, and that strikeouts are not as detrimental as previously thought, the uppercut swing has gained greater prominence.

As swings changed, so did the trends in how pitchers attacked batters. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the sinker was the trendy fastball that pitchers could throw low in the zone to get quick groundballs. But as the uppercut swing caught on, pitches like sinkers on a downward trajectory were easily lofted into the air by an upward slicing swing. Consequently, the four-seamer — with its rising action, ideally thrown at the top of the zone — took over as the fastball of choice because it was harder for hitters to connect with at an optimal launch angle. In the last five or so years, pitching strategies have become less one-size-fits-all, instead giving more weight to the individual strengths of the pitcher. Thus, hitters today typically see a more diverse array of pitch type and location combos, unless the hitter has an obviously exploitable weakness. And though an uppercut swing is not an explicit weakness, it can become one if a hitter’s attack angle becomes too steep, just as increasing the launch angle of a batted ball eventually leads to diminishing and then negative returns.

Among the most extreme average attack angles in Atlanta’s 2024 lineup (minimum 100 batted ball events) were Adam Duvall (7.72 degrees), Marcell Ozuna (3.11 degrees), Albies (2.97 degrees), Jarred Kelenic (1.93 degrees), and Orlando Arcia (1.53 degrees). Of this group, only Ozuna managed a positive wRC+ (154), likely due to his ability to hit the ball hard at a rate 10-20% higher than the other uppercut swingers with whom he shares a clubhouse. The hitters without uppercut swings also underperformed relative to their 2023, but they did so to a lesser degree (excluding Acuña and Matt Olson, who had the furthest to fall after posting ungodly numbers in 2023) and still put together largely respectable seasons.

The league-wide attack angle numbers show it’s hard to be a consistently good hitter with an extreme uppercut swing. The top of the leaderboard is littered with streaky hitters who strike out a lot — Joey Gallo (who is no longer a hitter), Davis Schneider, Nolan Gorman, Jake Rogers, etc. But there are some hitters who make it work, such as Jose Altuve, Rhys Hoskins, and Isaac Paredes. Relative to other uppercutters, these hitters tend to strike out less and vary their attack angle more, suggesting an ability to situationally adjust their bat paths as needed.

Since bat tracking data is new, we don’t have attack angles for 2023, so it’s unclear whether the Braves’ swings were more level that year or if they benefited from pitchers serving up favorable offerings more often, or some combination of the two. Moving forward, even if the 2025 Braves maintain their uppercutting ways and pitchers continue to challenge them up in the zone, it’s unlikely that Atlanta’s offensive output will remain this grim. As noted above, across both 2023 and 2024, the Braves’ actual outcomes tended to converge closely on their expected outcomes. So far this season, the team’s wOBA sits at .288 with an xwOBA of .316, which is just seven points behind their xwOBA in 2024. That means that at worst, we’re looking at a repeat of last season. But the Braves did hire a new hitting coach this past offseason, and they’ve likely caught on to the ways pitchers have adjusted, meaning we’re due for a reciprocal adjustment from the hitters, whether that’s developing a more situational swing or learning to lay off pitches that aren’t “their pitch.”

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