Matt Olson’s struggles have come at a tough time for the Braves

Matt Olson was a steadying force on the 2023 offense. Atlanta Braves But that success was hard to sustain. In 2023, Olson led the National League in games played, home runs, RBIs and slugging percentage. He finished the season with 7.4 bWAR and 6.5 fWAR, both career highs. Olson was ranked 1st in the NBA by teammate Ronald Acuña Jr. Dodgers Star Mookie Betts.

But something happened this season. Aside from his 11-game 2016 season with Oakland and the shortened 2020 season, this is arguably the worst performance of his career. He had a good game against the Twins earlier this week, but even including that game, he's only slashing .231/.312/.435 this season. His adjusted OPS+ of 105 is just 5 percentage points above the league average.

Obviously, those numbers are good, as they're above league average, but for a player with a career OPS+ of 133, such a dramatic drop-off is a bit shocking.

Statcast is a great tool that allows us to look at the underlying metrics and, through trend analysis, paint a historical picture of what has happened. It's also easy to get caught up in high level percentile rankings and forget that there are more granular numbers that get to those percentiles. We'll analyze the numbers at a granular level and try to figure out what happened this season and if it caused Olson's overall decline in production.

The first thing that stands out is that his walk rate is way down this season. A high walk rate was a key factor in Olson's 2024 season. His walk rate of 9.4% this season is in the top 35% of the league, which is the second lowest of his career (9.3% in 2019). By comparison, his walk rate of 14.4% last season was in the top 5% of MLB. One could argue that pitchers are being more aggressive against him this year because the lineup around him isn't as good. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Olson is not playing well. His strikeout rate of 26.6% is his lowest since 2020. He is striking out over 80% of eligible batters league-wide. This is mainly due to an increase in his chase rate, which has ballooned to 29.1%. That's the highest rate of his career, by the way. Pitchers are able to throw pitches that are less likely to be hit, but he's not able to easily avoid them.

Breaking it down further, we can see that Olson’s chase rate is up substantially across four different pitches.

Digging deeper, we can see where Olson is swinging at pitches outside the zone.

Olson is having a harder time avoiding pitches on the inside corner than he did last year, chasing them 34% of the time on the upper inside corner, up slightly from 30% last season.

Where he struggles most is on the lower inside corner, where he's chasing 50% of pitches there, up from 43% last season and the best of his career.

Swinging outside the zone doesn't necessarily result in a strike, and Olson has made contact with some of those pitches, but the hard hit rate tends to go down with pitches outside the strike zone. When Olson swings at pitches outside the zone and in the upper inside corner, he has a hard hit rate of just 13%. On pitches outside the zone and in the lower inside corner, where he likes to swing the most, he has a hard hit rate of 41%. That may seem high, but inside the strike zone, he has a hard hit rate of 60%.

Looking at those numbers, it's no surprise to see his expected slugging percentage (xSLG) of .441 and average exit velocity of 91.5 MPH, both his lowest since his rookie season. Not only is he striking out chasing pitches outside the zone, he's also making a lot of poor contact.

During his best season in 2023, Olson had an xSLG of .556 against curveballs. This season, that number dropped to .346, also a career low. His launch angle on curveballs is the same as in 2023, but his average exit velocity has dropped to 87.9 mph, again indicating he's just swinging at bad pitches.

Olson has also declined against fastballs. Last year, his score was 23. I don't need to spend an entire article explaining what that means, but just know that it was an outlier. This season, that number is down to 1. Last year, his expected weighted on-base percentage (xwOBA) against a four-seam fastball was .421. This season, his xwOBA is .368, a drop of 12.5%.

In summary, Olson is struggling to avoid pitches outside the strike zone, which is leading to fewer walks and more strikeouts. It also appears to be causing him to struggle to hit pitches that were his strength last year. One factor may be that Olson is working too hard to bolster a Braves lineup plagued by injuries and poor performances. Olson is a player to watch in September as Atlanta battles for the final National League playoff spot.