Matt Olson’s struggles have come at a tough time for the Braves
Matt Olson has chased his way to a tough season for the Atlanta Braves
Matt Olson was a steady force for the prolific offense of the 2023 Atlanta Braves but has had a difficult time sustaining that success. Olson in 2023, led the National League in games played, home runs, RBI, and slugging percentage. He ended the season with 7.4 bWAR, and 6.5 fWAR, both careers bests. Olson ended up finishing fourth in MVP voting, thanks largely to outstanding seasons by teammate Ronald Acuña Jr. and Dodgers star Mookie Betts.
Something has happened this season though. Other than his 2016 season, for Oakland in which he only played eleven games and his shortened 2020 season, his numbers are easily the worst of his career. He did have a good series of games against the Twins earlier this week, but even with that game, his slash line sits at .231/.312/.435 for the season. He has a 105 OPS+ which when adjusted, is just five percent above league average.
These numbers are obviously decent since they are above league average, however, coming from a player with a career 133 OPS+, it has been a bit shocking to see such a drastic drop in output.
Statcast can be a great tool in that can look at the underlying metrics and through trend analysis, paint a story of the history of what has happened. It is also easy to get caught up in the high level percentile rankings and forget that there are more granular numbers that get us to these percentiles. We will attempt to break down the numbers at a granular level and figure out what has happened this season that has caused a drop-off in Olson’s overall output.
The first thing that jumps out is that his walk rate is way down this season. A high walk rate was a key component to Olson’s 2024 season. His walk rate of 9.4 percent this season is still in the top 35% of the league, but it is the second lowest mark of his career (9.3 in 2019). For comparison his walk-rate last season was at 14.4% which was in the top 5% of MLB. The lineup around him is not as good this year, so one could argue that pitchers are more willing to pitch to him. However, that does not seem to be the case.
Olson has not helped himself. His 26.6% strikeout rate is his worst mark since 2020. He is striking out more than 80% of qualified hitters across the league. This is largely due to an increased chase rate that has ballooned to 29.1%. For reference, that is the highest rate of his career. Pitchers have been able to throw pitches that have a low hit chance and he simply hasn’t been able to lay off of them.
If we break it down even further we can see that Olson’s chase rate is up at a decent clip on four different pitches.
We can get even more granular and see where Olson is swinging at pitches outside of the zone.
Olson has struggled to lay off pitches that are inside more than he did last year. In the upper-inside quadrant we see that he is chasing 34% of the time, which is up slightly from 30% last season.
His biggest struggle has been in the lower-inside quadrant where he has chased 50% of pitches. That is up from 43% last season and is the highest mark of his career.
A swing outside of the zone does not always equal a strike and Olson does make contact on some of those pitches. However, hard hit rates tend to drop when a pitch is outside of the strikezone. When Olson swings at pitches in the upper-inside quadrant outside of the zone his hard hit rate is only 13%. In his seemingly favorite place to swing, the lower-inside quadrant outside of the zone, he has a hard hit rate of 41%. That may seem high, until you see that inside the strike zone he has a hard hit rate of 60%.
After looking at those numbers, It is no surprise that his expected slugging percentage (xSLG) of .441 and his average exit velocity of 91.5 MPH are both the lowest since his rookie season. He is not only chasing pitches out of the zone and striking out, but is making a lot of poor contact.
During his banner 2023 season, Olson had a .556 xSLG against breaking pitches. This season, that number is down to .346 which is also a career-low. His launch angle on breaking pitches is the same as in 2023 but his average exit velocity is down to 87.9 mph which again points to just swinging at bad pitches.
Olson has seen a similar drop-off against fastballs. Last year he had a run value of 23. Without spending an entire article explaining what that means, just know that it was an exceptional number. This season that number is all the way down to one. His expected weighted On Base Average (xwOBA) on the four seam fastball last year was a .421. This season he has a .368 xwOBA which is a drop off of 12.5%.
In summary, Olson is struggling to lay off pitches outside the strike zone. This has been a variable in reducing walks, and increasing strikeouts. It also looks to play a part in not getting as much solid contact on pitches that he excelled at hitting last year. One cause might be that he has tried to do too much in order to help carry a Braves lineup that has been riddled with injuries and underperformance. With Atlanta fighting the final playoff spot in the National League, Olson is a player to watch for September.