2024 Team Previews: Atlanta Braves
Going through all 30 teams, looking back at 2023 and ahead to the 2024 season through a fantasy baseball lens.
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Braves Intro
This is the end! We have gone through all thirty teams and written up something like 20 players per team. As always, this exercise was a lot more fun at the beginning than at the end, but I got through it and I don’t think we lost too much quality as we wrapped it up. We lost some quality, for sure, I was HYPED back in November to dig into the OAKLAND ATHLETICS, but for these last handful of teams I was kind of speeding through them.
It feels good to have done it though. In these days of demand for short and compact content, I feel accomplished to have put out some real depth. I really like what Twitter did with getting rid of the character limit recently too, it’s good to have the space and time to get your full message out. So maybe that’s a sign that we’re moving in the right direction again. Maybe people will get more into reading books and less into the 30 second video clips. Or maybe not, but I can dream.
The Braves won 104 games last year, so they were last on the list for me to get to. Things really couldn’t have gone more right for them. Essentially their entire lineup had career years all at the same time. Certainly Acuna, Albies, Olson, Arcia, and Ozuna all put together their best efforts, and nobody in that lineup under-performed. Riley, Harris, and Murphy basically did what you expected, so it was just an easy recipe for a 100+ win season. But they fell victim to the five=game series in the playoffs, being ousted by the Phillies pretty quickly.
There was no need for any changes in Atlanta, I think this lineup could support a bottom-ten pitching staff and still get to the playoffs. But they added on Chris Sale to bolster the rotation a bit, although we’ll have to see how long he is able to bolster them for. Their lineup is the best in baseball and they have three potential ace pitchers that are all currently healthy and ready to go for 2024.
It should be a fun year to watch the Braves again. I haven’t talked much about DFS this off-season, but I am curious as to what DraftKings will do with Acuna’s prices out of the gate. A normal price for a stud hitter is typically $5500-$6000, and he really wasn’t getting much above that last year despite being in a tier all to himself. The guy scored 2,081 DraftKings points, which was 357 above the second guy (Freddie Freeman). He scored 13 points per game, so that 357 is 27.4 games worth of points. If he missed 26 games, he still likely scores the most fantasy points in the league. Insane stuff. In reality the guy should probably be priced in the $7Ks, but we’ll see. I don’t think many people are particularly worried about DFS pricing right now!
It’s good to be a Braves fan right now, so congratulations if that describes you. Let’s finish this massive team preview series up!
Hitters
Ronald Acuna Jr.
Age: 26
Pos: OF
We start it off in lame fashion. What exactly would be the point of me analyzing Ronald Acuna Jr.? He’s number-one-iest of all number-one picks in fantasy history, probably.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Julio Rodriguez
JA: 685 PA, 131 R, 34 HR, 93 RBI, 48 SB, .297/.385/.534, .919 OPS
BatX: 680 PA, 130 R, 40 HR, 105 RBI, 53 SB, .319/.408/.595, 1.003 OPS
Matt Olson
Age: 30
Pos: 1B
Olson’s 54 bombs and 139 RBI last year have bolstered him way up to the clear #2 first baseman this year behind Freddie Freeman. It was an insane year for several Braves hitters, and Olson was certainly one of those.
I don’t ever expect a 50-homer player to repeat that. It’s just not something that happens often enough to ever project someone to do that, but that is not to say the power is in question at all.
He pulls the ball in the air a ton and hits it incredibly hard, and he only gives away about 23% of his PAs to strikeouts. So that leads to an easy 40-homer projection over full season, and with Acuna Jr. and Albies hitting in front of him there are just so many RBI opportunities.
The question is, should we drafting a guy that won’t steal bags in the second round? The answer is… I mean yeah! But I wouldn’t ever start a draft with Yordan Alvarez and Matt Olson, I don’t think. If you do that, you would really have to go after steals later with risky guys like Nico Hoerner or Esteury Ruiz. There are also plenty of power bats in the middle of good lineups at first base, so while nobody besides Alonso can really rival Olson’s projection or upside, there are non-terrible replacements behind him at the position.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Freddie Freeman, Pete Alonso
JA: 664 PA, 96 R, 36 HR, 110 RBI, 3 SB, .257/.363/.510, .872 OPS
BatX: 670 PA, 101 R, 40 HR, 109 RBI, 1 SB, .264/.366/.531, .897 OPS
Austin Riley
Age: 27
Pos: 3B
Similar to Olson here. There aren’t steals with Riley, and the batting average will be more like decent than good. But the power numbers have been steadily elite for years, and the Braves bolster his RBI projection.
We talked about him in the third base preview, about how his late-second or early-third round ADP doesn’t really seem like a great idea with the landscape of the position this year, but Riley is great and there’s nothing wrong with locking in this power projection early on in your draft.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Rafael Devers
JA: 663 PA, 96 R, 33 HR, 105 RBI, 4 SB, .268/.343/.497, .839 OPS
BatX: 665 PA, 100 R, 38 HR, 108 RBI, 2 SB, .282/.355/.540, .895 OPS
Ozzie Albies
Age: 27
Pos: 2B
Albies missed most of the 2022 season but came back in excellent form last year.
658 PA, 96 R, 33 HR, 109 RBI, 13 SB, .280/.336/.513, .849 OPS, 16% K%
Awesome stuff once again. The barrel rate was middling at 8.2%, but he made a bunch of contact (79% Contact%) and hit a ton of fly balls (34% FB%), so that turned into a really nice supply of homers, runs, and RBI.
His performance might have even been a bit overlooked by all the other crazy stuff going on in that lineup around him.
Maybe he’s not the 20-steal guy we thought he was a few years ago, but he still gets you double-digits there at minimum, I think.
The counting stats with the guy are off the chart. In 2021 he went for 103 runs and 106 RBI on 30 homers, and then you saw what he did last year. Nothing is likely to change there as long as he’s healthy, the Braves are probably the top lineup in baseball.
He’s just very good at everything with the bat. Strong contact, enough power, and a ton of fly balls.
So it’s all good for Albies. The downside is that maybe he only steals a dozen bags again and hits for a lower batting average if BABIP doesn’t go his way, but few players project better in R+HR+RBI.
Albies is my #2 second baseman behind Betts.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jose Altuve, Marcus Semien
JA: 650 PA, 97 R, 23 HR, 90 RBI, 12 SB, .262/.319/.446, .765 OPS
BatX: 641 PA, 90 R, 25 HR, 86 RBI, 17 SB, .270/.327/.472, .799 OPS
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