Atlanta Braves New-look Offense Racking up the Hits

Brian Snitker and the Atlanta Braves made some dramatic changes to the lineup and it’s paying off as the offense is racking up the hits. 

There is no question the Atlanta Braves offense has underperformed to this point and is a big reason why the team is off to such a slow start.

They rank 18th in the league in runs scored and are averaging nearly a run less per game this season compared to last year.

Part of that could be due to the deadened baseball. The Braves offense relies heavily on the long ball and those don’t seem to be coming as easily this year.

Last year they averaged 1.5 home runs per game. And while they’re sixth in baseball in home runs so far this season, they’re averaging just 1.2 home runs per game.

Because of that, Atlanta is going to need to find different ways to score, and it seems like they’re getting their with a new-look lineup.

Braves New Lineup Getting Hits, But Where are the Runs

The team made some drastic changes to the lineup to begin the Phillies series dropping Matt Olson to fifth and Austin Riley to seventh.

They also decided to ride the hot bat of William Contreras by putting him in the two-hole.

Granted, it’s a very small sample size, but the players have responded by piling up 25 hits in the last two games.

Contreras has 3 hits in those games, including a walk-off hit on Tuesday. Olson has hit in back-to-back games with a  go-ahead home run in the sixth on Tuesday. And Riley looked locked in again with four hits the past two games and sevral really hard-hit balls.

Marcelo Ozuna is currently riding an 11-game hit streak and Ozzie Albies has a 7 -game hit streak.

Dansby Swanson has quite possibly been the best Braves player this month slashing .284/.341/.486 with 4 home runs in May — not to mention his spectacular defense.

We’re starting to see a different approach from some of these hitters and it’s paying off in the hit column.

Now it’s time for it to start turning into runs. Even with all those hits the last two games, only two of them were for extra bases.

They’re also still striking out a good bit, not taking a ton of walks, and are station-to-station on the base paths.

Fixing those weaknesses are the next step for this offense to really take off. But the hits are certainly encouraging and they will start turning into more runs and home runs.