Struggling Offense Continues to Puzzle Braves Front Office

The Atlanta Braves offense continues to remain stagnant despite the talent in the lineup. A third of the way through the season, and the team isn't sure what will get it going again.

"We're looking at all kinds of things. We're working through things. We clearly have not been able to solve it as a group," general manager Alex Anthopoulos said. "For me to give you more and speculate, I just don't think it would be responsible. I wish I could tell you, look, here, this is it. You're going to see it start tomorrow night."

The team has a .693 OPS with runners in scoring position, ranked 21st in Major League Baseball. With all the unjuries last season, they had an anemic but still better .727 OPS in this situation.

An out of sync lineup has been a major culprit. Once one player starts to perform well, another player slumps. They have yet to be the well-tuned machine they were when they had one of the best offenses in baseball in 2023.

Anthopoulos pointed to some key improvements so far, such as catcher Sean Murphy looking more like his all-star self and having Ronald Acuña Jr. back. On the flip side, Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II, per his example, have been streaky this year.

He remains confident in all of them to be key bats. Everything just has to click for them at the right time. He pointed to the 2021 season, like others have this season, as an example of when that has happened.

The situation isn't seen as ideal, but they still have to figure out how to get back to previous success.

"Look, we don't want guys to be streaky. We want consistency. We want great performance. Of course we want to win every game, and we're working at it, but if I could pintpoint one thing, we would have had it addressed and we'd have it solved."

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