Atlanta Braves: The numbers show this offense is elite

The Atlanta Braves have been on a tear offensively since moving Ronald Acuna to the leadoff spot, but where do they rank among the other National League contenders?

On May 10th, Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker elected to move Ronald Acuna back to the leadoff, in hopes of injecting some life to a lineup that at the time, was struggling to score.

Along with Acuna moving to the top of the order was Dansby Swanson sliding in the two spot and Josh Donaldson moving down to the cleanup spot.

Since that move, the Atlanta Braves offense has been arguably the best in baseball and the 3.5 game deficit they faced on May 10th is now a 4.5 game lead in the National League East.

But just how good is the Braves offense? Are they on par or better with the rest of the NL?

In this piece, I took a look at what I deem to be the seven most important team stats and then broke down each position on each of the contenders to see where the Braves starters ranked based on offensive WAR.

Without giving away too much, it was very obvious from the first few moments of research that this team is an elite offensive team.

The lineup is long and deep, with power threats at every position. There is no easy out for opposing pitchers.

As of Thursday, June 20th, the division leaders are the Braves, Cubs, Dodgers, with the wild cards going to the Brewers and a tie between the Phillies and Rockies.

While other teams are in the mix for the playoffs, I chose to rank the CURRENT playoff teams.

(*All statistics are from baseball-reference.com)