Braves Establishing Themselves as Best In MLB Early in 2024

The Atlanta Braves are on a mission to dominate the regular season on the way to another World Series appearance

Atlanta Braves third baseman Austin Riley celebrates with his teammates after an 8th inning home run against the Chicago White Sox on Monday, April 1st. / Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves haven't had quite everything go their way so far this season, but you'd be forgiven for feeling otherwise.

The National League's reigning MVP, Ronald Acuña Jr., has only one extra base hit and no home runs through the team's first five games, while the team's already watched starting catcher Sean Murphy go onto the injured list after just three at-bats with a strained oblique.

But for the most part, life is good for a Braves team that currently leads baseball in runs per game while already holding a two game lead in the National League East over postseason nemesis Philadelphia.

Atlanta's 8.5 runs per game is the class of MLB; the next closest team is the Pittsburgh Pirates at 7.8. The Pirates were lucky enough to open with four games against the winless Miami Marlins, including two that went into extra innings, before facing last year's NL Esat cellar-dweller Washington Nationals. Atlanta had to go face a tough Philadelphia Phillies squad that's eliminated them from the postseason in each of the last two seasons before rolling up runs in the cold against the Chicago White Sox yesterday.

But despite the lack of homers - just six, one above MLB average and fve behind the league leaders - Atlanta's used hard hit balls and extra base hits to overwhelm their opponents so far in 2024, with their twenty-one extra-base hits giving the Braves a league-leading .567 slugging percentage after the first four games of the season.

Nine of the team's top ten position players have hit a double already (everyone but Marcell Ozuna, who has contributed one of the team's six home runs) and exactly as we expected, shortstop Orlando Arcia leads the team with four doubles. He's tied with centerfielder Michael Harris II for the team's second-best batting average, at .438, both behind leftfielder Jarred Kelenic's .545.

And for pitching, Atlanta's gotten great contributions from most of their starters, with the trio of Spencer Strider, Chris Sale, and Charlie Morton combining for sixteen innings with only four runs on eleven hits, striking out twenty-one and walking just six.

(Max Fried's Saturday start was only 2/3rds of an inning with three runs allowed, while Reynaldo López makes his first start of the season on Tuesday night, weather permitting, against the White Sox, his old team.)

But despite the Saturday struggle of Fried, Atlanta's pitching staff as a whole still has the 7th-best ERA in baseball at 3.18. This is due to the dominance of the three starters mentioned above, but also to excellent work out of the bullpen. Only three relievers have allowed runs in their outings, with Aaron Bummer's three on Sunday accounting for 60% of that total. (Jesse Chavez allowed one run in three innings in relief of Max Fried on Saturday, while Joe Jiménez allowed one run in his 1.2 innings of work across two appearances.)

Atlanta's completing their series against the Chicago White Sox, weather permitting, today and tomorrow before having an off-day on Thursday and hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks for the home opening series this Friday through Sunday in Truist Park.