Braves head to Baltimore to try to figure things out against a great Orioles team

The Atlanta Braves will make their final stop on a three-city road trip Tuesday when they begin a three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles. It has been tough sledding for the Braves of late, as they split two games in Boston to start the trip but then dropped three of four to the Washington Nationals for the second time this season. Atlanta got off to a 19-9 start but is just 16-19 since May 1.

While the starting pitching has performed despite the loss of Spencer Strider, the offense just hasn’t clicked. Atlanta entered Monday’s off day ranked 18th in runs scored and tied for 17th in home runs. They still rank 10th in batting average with runners in scoring position, but are in the lower third in that category since the start of May. Atlanta was 5-for-24 with runners in scoring position during the four games in Washington and that number was propped up a bit by a 3-for-7 performance Sunday. The Braves are tied for the Orioles for the major league lead in average exit velocity and are second in the majors in hard hit rate but that hasn’t translated into any meaningful results. They have MLB’s biggest xwOBA underperformance since May 1, which pretty much explains their record — they’re simply not hitting well enough offensively to overcome the worst luck in MLB in that span.

Marcell Ozuna leads the National League with 18 homers and 55 RBI but has gotten little help from the rest of the lineup. Austin Riley has an 86 wRC+ for the season and is 9-for-49 with two doubles in 13 games since missing two weeks with soreness in his side. His line would look a lot better if he didn’t have eight barreled outs, which is a top-20 mark in MLB even though he missed about a fifth of the season so far. Michael Harris has an 83 wRC+ for the season and also has a huge xwOBA underperformance. Neither Riley nor Harris actually have a particularly good xwOBA, but they don’t deserve the horrid results they’ve gotten, either. Adam Duvall is 6-for-46 with 18 strikeouts since moving into the lineup on an every day basis after Ronald Acuña Jr’s injury… and has, say it with me, a giant xwOBA underperformance too. Since May 1, Orlando Arcia is hitting .192/.218/.344 with a 53 wRC+.

You get the picture. It is a whole lot of ugliness. At some point, it’ll probably get less ugly, and hopefully that’s sooner and not later.