ATLANTA -- Braves manager Walt Weiss wants his team to be more multidimensional than it’s been in the past. But he’s not going to object to nights like Friday, when three homers supported a stellar Chris Sale and allowed the home crowd at Truist Park to celebrate a 6-0 win on Opening Day against the Royals.
“Look, I love homers,” Weiss said after winning his first game as the Braves’ manager. “But when you don’t hit the ball in the seats, you’ve still got to be able to score. And we will. But yeah, there’s a lot of damage up and down that lineup.”
No doubt. Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley and Matt Olson are all capable of 40-homer seasons. But this season-opening win came courtesy of the home runs hit by Ozzie Albies, Drake Baldwin and Michael Harris II, each of whom has the ability to hit 25-30 homers this season.
“We had some guys who struggled a little bit last year,” Weiss said. “Look, this is one game, but I have a good feeling about our offense and where we're at.”
Three homers, six scoreless innings from Sale and a shutout victory made for a nice debut for Weiss. Everything seemed to go his way, except for the 30-foot putt he missed during the postgame celebration in the clubhouse.
“It’s hard to read this carpet,” Harris joked when asked about the putt.
It’s also hard to discount how good this Braves offense could be now that Acuña, Riley and Albies have seemingly distanced themselves from the injuries that limited them the past couple seasons.
Nobody is expecting the Braves to mash like they did in 2023, when the club matched a Major League record with 307 homers and became the first team to produce a .500 slugging percentage.
But there is certainly reason to believe the Braves’ offense will be better than it was last year, when it ranked 14th in the Majors in home runs (190) and 13th in runs scored (724). The offensive struggles served as just one of the multiple reasons Atlanta missed the playoffs for the first time since 2017 last season.
“When you don't hit the ball in the seats, and you're so reliant on that to score runs, it doesn’t look good,” Weiss said. “It's not very pretty.”
Knowing the team needed to be more multidimensional, the Braves hired Antoan Richardson as their new first-base coach. Richardson was with the Mets last year when they ranked fifth in stolen bases (147), despite ranking last among all 30 teams in average sprint speed.
Acuña stole a franchise-record 73 bases in 2023 and then suffered a second ACL tear the next season. There’s still reason to believe he and Harris could steal 30-plus bases this season. Albies seems capable of reaching the 20-steal mark for the second time in his career.
During Spring Training, Harris said Riley could tally 20 stolen bases this year. The third baseman has just seven career steals. But Juan Soto improved his career-high stolen base total from 12 to 38 last year working with Richardson. So, why not Riley?
“We hit the ball in the seats tonight, but I think on the nights that we don't, we'll have a better chance to score some runs this year,” Weiss said.
Albies’ first-inning homer off Cole Ragans created further hope that he’s no longer limited by the fractured left wrist he suffered in July 2024. Harris’ two-run homer off Ragans in the fourth fueled hope that he may finally avoid the inconsistencies and slow starts that have plagued him over the past three seasons.
As for Baldwin, his line-drive homer in the third was just a continuation of what he did this spring, when he led the Grapefruit League with a 72.7 percent hard-hit rate.
“We can have a lot of fun,” Harris said. “I think that's what we did in the spring, just kind of having fun and trying to execute our plan at the same time. Just knowing the guy behind us can do the job, even if we don't.”