RON SEIBEL: Near season’s midpoint, Braves exceed expectations

From the day Brian Snitker was promoted to the managerial post of the Atlanta Braves, I thought he would be a good fit for a franchise in need of a rebuild.

Long a developer of talent in the Braves’ minor-league system, Snitker essentially had a “Quad-A” team to manage when he took over for Fredi Gonzalez. He inherited a young squad with few proven stars but plenty of potential.

The Braves appeared to start to turn the corner last year. They struggled at times, but there was a sense that this team was coming along.

The question entering 2018 for the Braves was not one of contending for a playoff spot. It was one of how much improvement would be shown in building toward a playoff run in a year or two. I wrote at the start of the year that eclipsing .500 would be a realistic goal.

Two weeks before the season’s midpoint, it appears that the goal of beating .500 just might have been too low of a bar to set.

The Braves entered play Saturday with 11 more wins than losses, or 5-1/2 games above .500 through 69 games. A loss to San Diego on Friday failed to knock the Braves out of first place, where they sit tied in the loss column with Washington but own three more victories.

At this point, an 81-win season, good for a .500 record, seems almost disappointing. The Braves are on pace for 94 wins, a record that puts a team in the postseason most years.

It’s a case of a lot of pieces coming together a lot quicker than anticipated.

At the plate, the Braves are taking care of things as well as anyone in the NL, especially when it comes to extra-base hits. Entering Saturday, the Braves are second to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL in slugging percentage with a .426 mark, and the team’s on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) mark of .754 is second to the Chicago Cubs.

Also, the Braves are third in the NL in both team batting average and on-base percentage.

The Braves haven’t built their slugging and OBP numbers through power alone. The team’s 81 home runs through Friday’s games put the Braves sixth in the NL, but the team’s 138 doubles were seven better than any other team in the NL at that point.

That’s a good sign. While blasts like Ozzie Albies’ game-defining grand slam against the New York Mets on Tuesday capture the hearts of fans and are always good to see, the Braves are also creating scoring opportunities through gapper hits and alert base-running. When trying to play for October, that’s important.

Albies is performing as promised all of last season in the run-up to his Aug. 1 big-league debut. Entering Saturday, he was second in the NL in home runs with 16, trailing only Washington’s Bryce Harper.

Freddie Freeman and Nick Markakis are certainly doing their parts to supplement Albies’ power. Freeman led the NL in batting average and OPS as of Saturday morning, while Markakis was fourth in batting average and 11th in OPS.

Starting pitching is a strong spot for the Braves this year, as well.

Two starters with double-digit appearances, Mike Foltynewicz and Sean Newcomb, had ERAs below 3 heading into Saturday’s action. So did Anibal Sanchez, who is 3-0 with a 1.93 ERA in six starts, and Mike Soroka, who posted a 2-1 record with a 2.57 ERA in his first four starts.

The Braves’ pitching staff had the fifth-best ERA in the NL heading into Saturday with a 3.64 mark, and they had the fourth-best opposing batting average at .232.

Even with this start, it’s too soon to put too much pressure on this Braves team. But if they can avoid a cold spell in July or August, this team will be in position to do things that exceeded the expectations of many heading into the season.

If that happens, then Snitker certainly deserves NL Manager of the Year honors.

Contact sports editor Ron Seibel at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ronseibel.