Just about everything has gone wrong for the Atlanta Braves this season. The rotation has been ravaged by injuries. The bullpen quickly collapsed from offseason neglect.
And the lineup has profoundly underachieved its talent level, blowing opportunity after opportunity and prompting some difficult questions about players that were once thought to be foundations for the future.
A team that once seemed as well-positioned for sustainable success as any in the Majors is now at a dangerous inflection point.
If any season demanded a hard reset, a total house-cleaning, it’s this one. And yet, it seems like Atlanta might avoid doing just that … for the most Braves reason imaginable.
The Athletic’s David O’Brien begins his latest article on what’s gone wrong in Atlanta with a sentence that should send a chill up every Braves fan’s spine: “Assuming the Braves bring back hitting coach Tim Hyers next season, since firing the hitting coach in consecutive years wouldn’t reflect well on organizational stability, there will be plenty of work to do in terms of changing many players’ approach to situational hitting.”
I’m sorry, what? The Braves, despite returning every major piece from what has been one of the best offenses in baseball in recent years, regressed across the board this year.
And they’re not going to do anything about the one different ingredient, the coach in charge of hitting, because … they’re worried about appearances?
For decades, Atlanta’s commitment to stability has been an asset rather than a liability.
This, though, would be beyond the pale.
Braves need a hard reset, no matter how it looks from the outside
For a decade, Kevin Seitzer thrived as Braves hitting coach, stewarding the development of players like Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley and Michael Harris II.
But he left this past winter to accept the same role with the Seattle Mariners, a change that in hindsight felt like a bad omen. (It’s probably not a coincidence that the Mariners are in the midst of a resurgent season.)
In his place, Atlanta tapped Hyers, most recently the hitting coach for the Texas Rangers — a team that, it should be noted, ranked a whopping 27th in team OPS last season.
(Granted, they dealt with several significant injuries after their 2023 World Series run, but still.)
The results have been downright dreadful: Atlanta currently sits 21st in team OPS, with Harris and Albies cratering and Riley taking a significant step back.
The only Braves regular who has exceeded expectations this season is rookie catcher Drake Baldwin.
At this point, it feels pretty clear that whatever Hyers has been preaching simply hasn’t worked.
Atlanta has far too much talent to be hitting like this, and if they want to resuscitate the careers of guys like Albies and Harris, a new voice is needed.
But of course, change is not exactly in the Braves’ DNA: This is a franchise that has been arguably baseball’s most stable, dating back to the John Schuerholz days. They believe in their guys, and they don’t want to devolve into chaos.
All of which is understandable.
But at this point, they risk falling into the sunk-cost fallacy, making another bad decision because they don’t want to admit their first one.
No amount of wish-casting will make Hyers any better for this roster; the situation is what it is, and the Braves’ only priority now should be acting quickly enough to remedy it before things get any worse.
