ATLANTA, GA – AUGUST 31: Atlanta Braves center fielder Michael Harris II (23) reacts after hitting a home run during the MLB game between the San Francisco Giants and the Atlanta Braves on August 31, 2026 at TRUIST Park in Atlanta, GA. (Photo by Jeff Robinson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) | Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Past summaries:
So far, so good through mid-April
Even better in late April
May-be they’re just really good
Late May just good, rather than absurdly awesome
A June swoon so far
Awful
Fake it and maybe make it
With some luck, back on the horse
Dwelling in the dog days of August
On August 15, the Braves were enjoying an 8-5 month. They then had more or less the road trip from hell, only to return home and sweep the Dodgers and keep it going with another sweep of the Rockies right after. In total, they went 9-6 over August’s second half. That .600 winning percentage is right in line with their overall .594 winning percentage, so nothing strange there. But, the way they got there… I’ll keep saying it, but this is a weird Braves team.
How did the Braves do recently?
This is basically the crux of the weirdness of the month… and year. The Braves finished these two-ish weeks with a matching .298 wOBA and xwOBA. Both of those are bottom ten marks over this span. The defense wasn’t anything special, either, such that the Braves ranked 19th in team position player fWAR in this span.
The team did hit a little better in August as a whole — 17th in xwOBA, 20th in wRC+, 19th in position player fWAR — but again, this was not some kind of strong offensive performance.
Pitching was a little more clear-cut in some ways, and less in others. The Braves finishing third in MLB in pitching fWAR over August’s second half, but that came with a 73/82/97 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) where the success was highly driven by stuff they didn’t control. Going sixth in ERA-, third in FIP-, and tenth in xFIP- for a couple of weeks will play, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t quite feel like it really compensated for the poor offense. Both the rotation and bullpen benefited from a low HR/FB, and both ranked highly in fWAR as a result.
For August as a whole, the pitching staff was fifth in MLB in fWAR — second by the rotation, and middle of the pack by the bullpen. For all the hand-wringing about not getting a better starter at the Trade Deadline, the rotation really stepped up… even the rotation’s xFIP- in August of 91 is good for sixth in MLB for the month.
For these two weeks, the Braves’ accumulated WAR suggested an 8-7 record, so they weren’t very far off. (Thanks, pitching staff and lack of fly balls leaving the yard!) For August, where the Braves went 17-11, they should have gone 15-13 by fWAR-based wins. So, yeah, this team is good at outplaying their production, as they have been for a while now.
Schedule and game-by-game odds-wise, again, the Braves should’ve gone 8-7. They did a little better. They didn’t have any groundbreaking upsets either way, but it is worth noting that losing their makeup game against the Giants at home on August’s final day was the team’s second-worst loss in terms of pre-game odds. Not being able to handle the Giants amid a successful season definitely factors into the weird.
How are the Braves doing on the season?
Well, there’s the rub, right? With five months in the books, the Braves are:
18th in position player fWAR, including 13th in xwOBA, 16th in wRC+, and ninth in team defense.
11th in pitching fWAR, broken down as 15th in the rotation and sixth in the bullpen, with an aggregate fourth, 13th, and 11th in ERA-, FIP-, and xFIP-, respectively.
Put all this together and through 138 games, the Braves have a team fWAR of 30.0. A replacement-level team would win about 41 of 138 games, and the Braves, by that logic, “should have” 71 wins. But, y’know, the Braves have 82 wins and not 71. Which all circles back to the idea that this team isn’t particularly good at anything except accumulating a bunch of wins without the production to justify it. It’s a hell of a thing to be good at, because it’s not really a skill, just a quirk, but the Braves just keep doing it. Seriously:
April: 22-10, 19-13 by WAR-wins, +3
May: 18-10, 15-12 by WAR-wins, +3
June: 9-14 (ew), 8-15 by WAR-wins, +1 (even in June they did it!)
July: 16-11, 14-13 by WAR-wins, +2
August: 17-11, 15-13 by WAR-wins, +2
The 2026 Braves’ most consistent skill has been winning games on and above their production. Yay?
How are the hitters doing?
Boy, what a strange two weeks in this regard. Even stranger than usual.
Only four guys performed well at the plate over the last two weeks: Drake Baldwin, Matt Olson, Michael Harris II, and Sean Murphy. Of those four, three massively outhit their inputs, while Matt Olson somehow got saddled with a massive underperformance, such that he actually lost a fraction of fWAR. The other guys all kinda sucked, both inputs-wise and outputs-wise. Mauricio Dubon at least outhit his inputs enough to be respectable, but Mike Yastrzemski fell into another underperformance vortex.
For the season as a whole, the breakdown more or less remains what it is at this point. This is a team led by Harris and Olson, with some good production from Baldwin as well. Dubon has been a great fill-in but isn’t anything special as a regular; the best buds of Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña Jr. have kind of cancelled out each other’s inputs-outputs mismatch and have been below-average regulars thus far, which is a shame. We kind of stopped talking about Austin Riley, but he’s back to being bad again. The outfield platoon, such as it is, is in a weird spot: Yastrzemski has been fine against righties and Lane Thomas has crushed lefties… but the Braves’ lack of slavish devotion to a platoon has harmed both of their lines and value.
You can see that other than the aforementioned best buds duo, the wOBAs and xwOBAs have largely normalized for anyone with a decent sample of PAs.
Harris gets a special shoutout for his contributions during these two weeks: only three of his teammates even finished in the positive in terms of WPA (Ha-Seong Kim being one of them, delightful walkoff with two outs and all), and he had more WPA (1.02) than those three combined. He probably won’t catch Olson (2.66) for the team lead in WPA, but it’s not that far (Harris has 2.21). If Chris Sale weren’t around, the debate between Harris and Olson for team MVP would at least be marginally interesting, but… Chris Sale is very much around.
How are the pitchers doing?
The rotation did well these past two weeks, and in August, so the numbers here are mostly gladdening. Sale’s video game numbers aside, Tyler Mahle pitched very well, and Grant Holmes actually chipped in a decent starting performance as well, though a lot of that was HR/FB-driven. Bryce Elder and Martin Perez had basically what-you-expect-from-these-guys-at-this-point stretches. If things keep up, a playoff rotation of Sale-Mahle-Perez seems pretty good, but the “if things keep up” is doing so much work there it’s almost not worth typing. I think that if push comes to shove, the Braves might give Bryce Elder the third spot because he hasn’t come out of the bullpen before, which is a risky proposition given his ongoing homer issues. With this roster, I can see an attempt at letting Elder start and run a bunch of lefties into the opposing lineup, and then the insertion of Perez as soon as there’s any trouble… but again, you’re still banking on Elder not giving up a homer (or like a walk-walk-homer combo) before you do that.
A special shoutout to Didier Fuentes, who didn’t actually pitch super-great (he was good, just not super-great) lately, but managed to rack up over 0.80 WPA in just seven outings, even while having two meltdowns. Also, file under “bet ya didn’t know this”: Raisel Iglesias managed a 5/0 shutdown/meltdown ratio over these past two weeks.
See you in the middle of September!