A week into the season and we finally have some stats to look at. The sample size is small, but who cares.
Here are the 8 Braves hitters with 15+ PAs ranked by wOBA - xwOBA:
1 Ozzie Albies 0.531 - 0.457 0.074
2 Dansby Swanson 0.488 - 0.418 0.070
3 Freddie Freeman 0.488 - 0.460 0.028
4 Ender Inciarte 0.297 - 0.286 0.011
5 Josh Donaldson 0.258 - 0.316 -0.058
6 Nick Markakis 0.400 - 0.459 -0.059
7 Ronald Acuna Jr. 0.305 - 0.417 -0.112
8 Brian McCann 0.294 - 0.407 -0.113
Ozzie (.500 BABIP) and Swanson (66.7% HR/FB) are clearly getting pretty lucky early on, but both guys are legitimately hitting well according to xwOBA.
Freeman is doing Freeman things. I hate to take it for granted, but he's a tremendous hitter who is performing tremendously.
Inciarte is truly struggling early. Pulling the ball too much (76.5% Pull%), as was his problem early last year. He needs to be spraying the ball around to be effective as a punch and judy hitter.
JD isn't getting results, but xwOBA suggest he is hitting like an average hitter rather than a terrible hitter. He hasn't really hit the ball in the air yet, and when he does I expect to see the HRs follow.
Markakis is simply hitting line drives everywhere (45% LD%). He is legitimately going well right now.
Ronald is, simply put, getting screwed early in the season. He is walking twice as much as he's striking out, he's hitting the ball hard, but his BABIP is currently an absurd .125. Expect that to change.
Mac has similar BB/K numbers as Acuna, but is pounding grounders into the shift.
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