Nine Stats That Explain Atlanta’s Historic Hitting

Atlanta was a surprise winner of the 2021 World Series. The 88-win NL East champions had the worst record of any division winner and entered every playoff series as the underdog: the NLDS against the Brewers, the NLCS against the Dodgers, and the World Series against the Astros.

But if the franchise wins its second title of the 21st century this year, it will do so as a favorite. As of Wednesday, FanGraphs playoff odds give Atlanta a 26.9 percent chance to win the 2023 World Series—nearly as high as the rest of the NL playoff field combined (31.2 percent).

Despite those odds, and despite its 104-win regular season, Atlanta is not flawless this October. The rotation in particular looks shaky behind MLB strikeout king Spencer Strider. Max Fried and Charlie Morton both ended the season on the IL, while first-half surprise Bryce Elder declined sharply as the season progressed (2.45 ERA through July 3; 5.75 ERA after). Granted, just about every remaining team has pitching questions this October, whether because of injury, bullpen uncertainty, or lack of depth, but Atlanta is vulnerable in this important area.

And yet Atlanta’s offense is so dominant that it might not need all that much on the pitching front to triumph this month. Atlanta’s lineup isn’t just the best among playoff teams in 2023—it’s arguably the best ever, or at the very least since integration. So as the World Series favorite prepares to begin its playoff run this weekend, hosting the Phillies on Saturday, let’s run through nine numbers—one for each spot in its dynamic lineup—that best illustrate Atlanta’s offensive firepower.

307

It makes sense to start with the simplest, boldest headline stat, and it’s hard to get simpler or bolder than this: Atlanta hit 307 home runs this season, tying the MLB record set by the 2019 “Bomba Squad” Twins.

Matt Olson led the way with a franchise-record 54 dingers, the top mark in the majors this season. MVP favorite Ronald Acuña Jr. added 41, along with his remarkable 73 stolen bases. Marcell Ozuna chipped in with 40 homers, Austin Riley with 37, and Ozzie Albies with 33.

The back half of the lineup wasn’t quite as prolific but still clubbed homers at an impressive pace. Catcher Sean Murphy hit 21 homers in his first season in Atlanta; 2021 playoff hero Eddie Rosario also hit 21 this season. And Michael Harris II and Orlando Arcia—the latter of whom replaced free agent Dansby Swanson at shortstop with aplomb—rounded out the lineup with 18 and 17 long balls, respectively.

The other top lineups in baseball tend to be either star-studded (see: the Dodgers, with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman) or deep (see: the Rangers, who were solid but placed only Corey Seager among the top 25 hitters this season). But Atlanta combines the best of both constructions, with homer-happy stars like Acuña and Olson at the top of the lineup and 20-homer power all the way at the back of the lineup.

In fact, Atlanta’s record-tying home run total is even more impressive given the broader leaguewide context, as the next number demonstrates.

58

Minnesota earned the home run record in 2019—but at the same time, it benefited from the most homerific season in league history. Beyond the Twins, the 2019 campaign also brought 306 homers from the Yankees (now third most all time), 288 from the Astros (fourth), and 279 from the Dodgers (fifth).

The 2023 season, by contrast, had a lot of home runs compared to previous periods in baseball history, but not compared to more recent seasons. The average team hit 30 more homers in 2019 than in 2023, and the gap between Atlanta and the second-place Dodgers this season was a whopping 58 home runs.

That’s the second-largest difference between first and second place in modern history, behind only the 1947 Giants’ plus-65 over the Pirates. This enormous gap also means that Atlanta would have led the majors in homers this season even if Olson—who, remember, led the majors in homers—hadn’t hit any at all.

In nerdier statistical terms, this Atlanta team exceeded the average 2023 team’s home run total by a full three standard deviations, which is the third-highest figure for any AL or NL team since 1901. Only the 1920 Yankees (3.2 standard deviations above), who famously had Babe Ruth outhomering all but one other team by himself, and the 2010 Blue Jays (3.1), who enjoyed José Bautista’s breakout in a relatively powerless season, rate better by this metric.

.501

Unlike Sylvester Coddmeyer III, Atlanta didn’t hit only homers. Acuña and friends were good for plenty of singles and doubles and even the occasional triple, too. All that production led to another record-setting statistic, and this time, Atlanta didn’t need to share the lead with any previous team.

Rather, Atlanta became the first team to slug .500 in a season—.501, to be precise. For context, .501 is about what mashers Pete Alonso (.504), Rafael Devers (.500), and Bryce Harper (.499) slugged this year—and Atlanta reached that mark as a whole team.

Adjusted for league context, Atlanta’s teamwide slugging percentage was 20 percent higher than the league average. In the modern era, the 1927 Murderers’ Row Yankees (19 percent higher) were the only team that had previously gone above 15 percent.

5

We’re not done with slugging percentage yet because even that teamwide record undersells, to some extent, Atlanta’s sheer dominance in this statistical category in 2023. Take a look at the top of the MLB leaderboard and notice what jumps out:

That’s two of Atlanta’s hitters in the top five, three in the top seven, and five in the top 15. Albies, in other words, is fifth on his own team in slugging—but he would’ve led 21 other teams. Atlanta was basically trotting out half an All-Star lineup every day. (Or, not just basically, but actually: Six of the team’s position players were named All-Stars this year.)

125

Thus far, we’ve focused on the lineup’s power, but it also reached a record in overall performance. wRC+ is a statistic that encapsulates everything a player does at the plate, then adjusts for the broader league environment and the ballpark, on a scale in which 100 is average.

Atlanta’s wRC+ as a team this year was 125, meaning it was 25 percent better than the average team. That’s a historically great figure. A handful of Negro League teams—including several iterations of the mid-1920s St. Louis Stars, with future Hall of Famers Cool Papa Bell, Willie Wells, and Mule Settles—did better in shorter seasons. But over a full AL or NL campaign, nobody has. This Atlanta squad caught the Murderers’ Row Yankees, the most famous lineup in MLB history, who’d held this record by themselves for nearly a century (or, well, for as long as wRC+ has existed, and then back to 1927 in retrospect).

The top of the all-time leaderboard had previously consisted of three Ruth-Gehrig Yankees teams and the 2019 Astros; now, Atlanta is nestled right at the top. (To be fair, Atlanta benefited here from the presence of a DH slot in its lineup, meaning its overall numbers weren’t deflated by pitcher at-bats. Remove pitchers, and the top of the list includes a number of pre-integration teams, plus the 1976 Big Red Machine.)

Moreover, Atlanta led all of its 2023 competitors in just about every conceivable split, suggesting its supremacy across all sorts of different situations. It led with a 127 wRC+ at home and a 123 on the road, with a 121 in the first half of the schedule and a 129 in the second half, with a 120 with the bases empty and a 130 with runners on. The club also led with a 131 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers and a 123 against righties, and its balanced R-S-R-L-R-L-R-L-R batting order (with some potential variation in the final spots) could provide a small boost in the playoffs because the three-batter minimum means opposing relievers will be forced to lose the platoon advantage for at least part of their appearances.

Opposing pitchers also won’t be able to relax at any point when facing Atlanta’s lineup, which has no weak spots, as evidenced by the next number on this list.

99

A late-season slump from Arcia, who hit .200/.260/.316 in September, took a bit of the luster off this statistic, but it’s still shiny enough—because Arcia had the worst batting line among Atlanta’s nine regulars, and he still posted a 99 wRC+ (meaning he was only 1 percent below average) this season.

Among all other teams’ top nine position players in plate appearances this season, only 5.3, on average, had a wRC+ of 99 or better. Among other playoff teams, the average was six. In essence, then, Atlanta’s lineup is half again as deep as the average opponent it might face this October.

56

We can dig deeper into what that dynamic means for Atlanta’s chances this month. The team exhibited a severe regular-season split between its regulars and reserves. Its top nine players posted a collective .283/.354/.519 slash line, good for an .872 OPS and a 132 wRC+. The backups, by contrast, were much worse, combining for a .230/.278/.384 slash line, for a mere .662 OPS (210 points lower than the starters’) and 76 wRC+.

Wow, the starters are better than the backups—what insightful sports analysis! But in Atlanta’s case, the difference between the two groups is especially aberrant: The 56-point gap between the starters’ 132 and the backups’ 76 wRC+ marks was the biggest for any team in 2023.

(The Rays had the second-largest gap, of 48 points; the Angels, with Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, had the third largest at 46 points. On the other end, remarkably, the Twins’ nine batters with the most plate appearances had a collective wRC+ that was 8 points lower than all the rest of their players managed, for the largest negative differential of any team in the wild-card era—which is why the likes of Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner, and Alex Kirilloff are all starting in the playoffs despite less playing time in the regular season.)

It’s no wonder that Atlanta’s roster looks built for postseason success. Manager Brian Snitker won’t need to call on pinch-hitters because of the universal DH, and in October he should be able to pencil in that same group of starters every game, other than using Kevin Pillar as a platoon partner for Rosario against southpaws.

Snitker already turned to his best players a lot in the regular season: Olson started all 162 games, while Acuña and Riley were both at 159. Still, he left room for backups to occasionally pick up—and often waste—at-bats here and there; in the regular season, players outside Atlanta’s top nine combined for 13 percent of the team’s total plate appearances. Barring injury, there’s no way that the club’s lesser bats play even that much in October.

.453

Here’s another way Atlanta’s lineup seems built for postseason success: The club slugged .453 against 95-mph-or-faster fastballs this season, the top mark in the league by a 27-point margin. The gap between Atlanta and second-place Baltimore or Seattle was larger than the gap between Baltimore and 10th place.

Atlanta, and every other playoff team, should be ready to face a lot of high-velocity fastballs in the playoffs. Analysis of Statcast data shows that a much higher percentage of fastballs reach the 95-mph threshold in October than in the regular season—and Atlanta, of course, hits the fast ones the best.

(They hit slower fastballs the best too, of course—just like they do with everything else.)

139

Finally, we’ll end on one more broad team note that perhaps portends October success. All of these figures do to some extent—even the basic home run stats—because despite common announcer tropes, teams that hit a lot of homers actually win more often in the playoffs. Long ball beats smallball, and Atlanta was the most homer-reliant team, with the highest Guillen number, this season.

Earlier, we looked at how Atlanta led the league in all manner of offensive splits, like home/road and left-/right-handedness. Here’s one more: Atlanta’s teamwide wRC+ in high-leverage situations this season was an MLB-best 139, meaning the team was 39 percent better than average. Thirty-nine percent! That means Atlanta collectively hit like a top-15 batter in the most important situations, presumably against the toughest relievers it could have faced.

There’s no higher leverage than October baseball. And there’s no lineup better suited to make the most of those chances than Atlanta’s homer-hitting, record-setting one through nine.