After Tough Road Trip, Including Dodgers Sweep, Braves Tumble in Updated Power Rankings

The Atlanta Braves have not had a good week. 

Finishing their most recent road trip with a 1-5, Atlanta’s coming off of a sweep at the hands of the Los Angeles Dodgers and now find themselves in unfamiliar territory - in 2nd place, sitting two and half games back of the Philadelphia Phillies, who are 9-1 in their last ten games. The Braves haven’t been 2.5 games back in the divisional standings since September 23rd, 2022, although they came back to win the NL East on the season’s final day. 

The recent struggles by Atlanta, who are only 4-6 in their last ten games, have resulted in some movements in the most recent MLB Power Rankings.

MLB.com, putting out their update this morning, dropped Atlanta from 1st place down to 4th. Here’s what writer Will Leitch said about Atlanta’s movement: 

Max Fried, a SoCal native famous for doing well against the Dodgers, came into Sunday not having given up a run in his previous two starts. Unfortunately for him, the Dodgers are smoking right now. Fried wasn’t a disaster against them -- he gave up four runs in seven innings -- but it wasn’t enough. The Braves have been one of the best teams in baseball for several years now. But when you put them up against the Dodgers this weekend, Atlanta looked like the lesser team by a considerable amount.

On the six-game road trip to Seattle and Los Angeles, Atlanta batted .168/.218/.244 with 58 strikeouts and only eight extra-base hits. They stranded thirty-one runners on base and scored a total of fourteen runs, just barely over two runs a game. 

That offensive futility was cited by Bleacher Report in their movement of Atlanta from #1 all the way down to #6 in their power rankings update on Monday morning. 

The Braves had lost just one series all season heading into last week, but after getting swept by Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers on Sunday they are now smack dab in the middle of their first real bad stretch of the year. The high-powered Atlanta offense managed just 14 runs over six games against the Mariners and Dodgers, so getting back on track at the plate will be the key to a quick turnaround.

(Quick correction for BR’s Joel Reuter: Atlanta hadn’t lost a series entering last week. They’re technically down 2-1 to New York in the early April series, but the April 10th rainout from that series is being made up on September 26th, so that series isn’t officially decided yet and the Braves could still split.)

He’s not wrong that the offense needs to figure some things out, though. Austin Riley and Ronald Acuña Jr both hit homers over the weekend against LA, but they’re still not producing where they need to be. Matt Olson, however, continues his struggles, with his batting average now down to .197. The trio all have more strikeouts than games played (32), with Olson at 35, Riley at 36, and Acuña almost halfway (40) to last season’s total of 84. 

After a day off on Monday, the Braves are back in action against the Boston Red Sox. It’s not really the ideal “get right” series for the offense, as Boston’s 2.61-team ERA is more than a third of a run better than the next closest team’s.