The Atlanta Braves hit a lot of home runs last season.
Launching 307 longballs, the 2023 Braves tied the 2019 Minnesota Twins for most homers in a single regular season, and unlike those Twins, the Braves didn't have the advantage of a "juiced" baseball. First baseman Matt Olson led all of baseball in homers with 54, setting a new team record despite admitting that he wasn't even trying to hit them at times.
But in 2024, projections say that he's not going to defend his homer crown. Instead, it's going to Ronald Acuña Jr.
In the latest ZiPS projections from FanGraphs, Ronald's homer total of 43 would lead all of MLB. And Ronald hitting 43 homers isn't that wild of an idea - Ronald hit 41 homers in both 2019 and 2023, so one good game gives you to a new career-high of homers.
No, the more interesting aspect of this story is that Matt Olson's projected to significantly underproduce last season's record-setting performance. Olson's line, per ZiPs, would be .260/.360/.515 with 37 homers.
For context, Olson's 2023 was a .283/.389/.604 line, with Olson's slugging, homer, and RBI (139) totals all leading the league.
And why is Olson projected so low? Yes projection systems are inherently conservative and assume regression, but why would Olson's slugging drop almost 100 points?
Why projections would be low on Olson's 2024
I think it's a result of Olson's out-producing his expected stats in 2023. If you look at MLB Statcast, there's several reasons to expect a regression on paper.
Olson's expected home run numbers from 2023 were just 50 bombs, with eight of his home runs defined as "doubters", meaning that specific batted ball wouldn't have been a homer in more than eight ballparks. And looking at his "Expected Home Runs by Park" chart is funny, with Olson projected for low-40s totals if he played in St. Louis (42), San Francisco (43), or Pittsburgh (44).
Another potential reason is Olson's overperformance of his batted ball metrics. Based on the exit velocity, directions, and launch angles of his batted balls, Olson's "expected" batting average was only .264 and "expected" slugging was .558 last season, buth numbers he easily beat. Some of this is random variation and luck, which has a way of normalizing over longer samples.
Why the projections are wrong
But I think some of it is also giving too much weight to the early season performance of Olson before he changed lineup spots. Batting mostly 2nd, through June 14th, Olson batted .228/.347/.483 with a 29.9% strikeout rate (and only 18 homers in those 68 games).
After moving to predominantly cleanup the next day, Olson batted .324/.420/.693 with 36 homers in 94 games and a 18.2% strikeout rate down the stretch.
If I was putting money on it, I'd take the over on Olson's projected homer total of 37. Because Atlanta's figured out what works now, and he raked as a result.
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