Through nine games this season, the Atlanta Braves are 5-4, which puts them on pace for 90 wins. Of course, it’s preposterous to gauge a team’s future success based on less than two weeks of play, but observing trends can also help understand what exactly is going on when things aren’t going as expected. Whether a guy is underperforming or playing over his head, there’s always some kind of statistical indication as to why.

The Braves currently have three starters batting at least .340 with an OPS of 1.000. Charlie Culberson alone has an OPS+ of 300. The starting rotation has a 2.74 ERA, and Julio Teheran is striking out 12.6 per nine innings. You may as well go ahead and crown the Atlanta Braves 2019 eleven-day paper champions.

Here are a few other small samples that may (or may not) get you hot for the rest of the Atlanta Braves’ season:

Dansby’s on pace for 54 bombs

With three homers in nine games for Dansby Swanson, just about everyone is ready to label this a breakout season for the 25-year-old. If he maintains anything close to his .346/.471/.731 slash line, he’ll be one of many Braves topics of discussion for quite a while. It’s hard to imagine Dansby continuing to homer in a third of his team’s games, but the evidence before our eyes is symbolic of his changed approach.

In this post, I talked about how Dansby worked with Chipper Jones to make a few adjustments at the plate, and while they seem to have had a direct impact on his swing, it’s what he’s not swinging at that has me excited. Swanson has six walks to six strikeouts on the young season, and that’s in part due to his outside swing % dropping from 36.5% last season to 23.1% so far this year. In total, he’s swinging at 13% fewer pitches, which is a great strategy to have when batting in front of the pitcher.

If Dansby does continue his success, the Braves will have no choice but to find a spot higher in the order for him to reside. The only question is, will his new approach be this effective at the top of the order where pitchers are attacking the zone more often? A 1.8% drop in swinging strike percentage from last year to go along with a 28.6% line drive rate could be huge factors in determining that.

Acuña’s .087 BABiP

Entering play Monday, Ronald Acuña sports a nifty .087 batting average on balls in play (.000 since signing his extension). The stat, of course, excludes home runs from its equation as the ball is never technically “in play”. Had it not been for his two bombs thus far, there would be probably a few more fans worried about Ronald Acuña falling into a sophomore slump. In all honesty, though, there’s nothing to worry about. The kid is going to have is mini-struggles. Believe it or not, Acuña is still getting adjusted to life at the MLB level. He’ll have his ups and downs, but ultimately he will be the same offensive force he was in 2018.

Acuña’s seven walks to six strikeouts are one reason not to be worried about his long-term numbers. He’s seeing the ball well, and making contact 73.2% of the time. League average Contact% is around 80%, but guys like Acuña that make consistently hard contact can afford to drop that number down into the mid and even low-70’s. They’re able to count on their BABiP being marginally higher than league average due to how hard they hit the ball. The key to doing so is plate discipline, something Ronald looks to have improved upon from last year.

Ronnie’s outside swing rate has dropped from 27.5% to 19.8%, but his outside contact rate has actually risen from 59.8% up to 78.3%. For reference, Joey Votto set his career best outside contact rate last year at 78.4% with a 16.4% outside swing rate. The reason Acuña’s traditional numbers don’t look great right now is because he’s seen a 6.1% spike in medium contact paired with a 13.7% increase in ground balls, and his fly ball rate has dropped from 39.4% to 28%. Once he starts getting the ball back up in the air, you can count on Ronald Acuña doing a lot more of this:

Donaldson leads the team with a 96 MPH average exit velocity

Baseball analysts, writers, and commentators are going to say the words “exit velocity” enough in the coming years to drive some fans crazy, but it’s a great measurement of success (or lack thereof). Cody Bellinger, who has an MLB best seven home runs entering play on Monday, has an average exit velocity of 96.9 MPH. Hit ball hard, ball go far. Big science make head hurt.

It’s been obvious that Josh Donaldson has been trying to bring some rain to SunTrust Park. Through big hack after big hack, he’s amassed ten strikeouts in nine games while also leading the team in average exit velocity (96 MPH) and hard contact (60%). Donaldson’s problem has largely been the fact that he’s put eleven of his twenty balls in play on the ground, resulting in an average launch angle of just 9.1 degrees (MLB average this year has been 12.4 degrees).

Donaldson is doing a great job of making contact with pitches in the strike zone, doing so at an 86.8% rate. His 7.6% swinging strike rate would qualify as the best mark of his career, so it’s evident that putting the bat on the ball hasn’t been his issue at all. He’s just been put in too many unfavorable counts. He’s started a plate appearance 0-1 twenty times so far, but has only begun with fourteen 1-0 counts. That further progressed to seventeen two-strike counts to fifteen three-ball counts (including his six walks). Any MLB hitter will tell you that it’s a lot harder to have success when you find yourself in more pitcher’s counts than hitter’s counts.

In all seriousness…

The Atlanta Braves have guys that aren’t performing yet that’ll likely be tearing the cover off of the ball two months from now. There’s also a great probability that guys will regress from their current performances. The fun in baseball lies within not only the product at the end of the season, but the ups and downs during the season when you’re cheering on your favorite player amidst an 0-for-20 skid.

Through all the home runs, strikeouts, stolen bases, and double plays, Chop On!