With the first half of the 2026 MLB season nearly in the books, the Braves’ Statcast profile has started to settle into something more revealing than a small-sample blur. That makes the outliers stand out even more.
Some are exactly what you’d expect. Others are flat-out strange.
Atlanta has built one of the more interesting spread-out collections of Statcast extremes in baseball, from blazing speed to glacial pace, from elite contact suppression to a center fielder who keeps living on the edge at the plate.
Start with the legs. Eli White and Jorge Mateo have given the Braves two of the fastest players in the sport, both sitting in the 100th percentile in sprint speed.
Mateo is the quicker of the two at 30.4 feet per second, with White right behind him at 30.3. That’s a notable development for a club that spent last season near the bottom of the league in stolen bases and BsR, then went out and brought in first base coach Antoan Richardson from the Mets in the offseason to help address the issue.
The other end of the speed spectrum was just as eye-catching. Sandy León was, at one point, the slowest player in MLB this season. His sprint speed checked in at 22.1 feet per second, which put him 1.6 feet per second behind everyone else.
On the mound, Dylan Lee has been every bit the weapon Braves fans have come to trust. His 1.56 ERA is strong on its own, but the underlying numbers are even louder.
Lee’s xERA sits at 1.95, which lands in the 99th percentile, and he’s doing it with a fastball that averages 93.3 MPH, a mark that ranks in the 28th percentile. The rest of the profile is just as nasty: 99th-percentile whiff rate, plus 89th-percentile marks in xBA, chase rate, K-rate, walk-rate, barrel percentage and hard-hit rate.
Michael Harris II shows up multiple times on the list, and for good reason. Defensively, he’s been excellent, with six outs above average and a 95th-percentile defensive ranking.
His estimated success rate is also 92%, the third-highest in baseball, which suggests he hasn’t had to deal with a ton of difficult chances. Even so, when the tough ones do come his way, he’s been up to the task, going 24 for 31 on balls with catch probabilities of 75% or lower, with four of his misses coming on plays with 25% odds or lower.
At the plate, though, Harris remains the game’s ultimate free swinger. His chase rate has actually climbed from 43.1% to 45.1%, and only Jake Mangum (47.9%) and Ezqequiel Tovar (46%) are chasing more often.
That’s the kind of number that would usually drag a hitter down. Instead, Harris has paired the aggression with real damage.
His .302 xBA ranks in the 99th percentile, and his 50% hard-hit rate sits in the 89th percentile. The result has been a return to the kind of production that made him the 2022 NL Rookie of the Year, and a big part of Atlanta’s first-half success.
Not every outlier is flattering. Martín Pérez’s fastball velocity is in the 2nd percentile, and only 10 pitchers have been slower on average this season. Even with that lack of heat and some slightly concerning underlying metrics, he still handled run prevention well enough before an arm injury raised the obvious question about how serious it might be.
Then there’s Dominic Smith, who looks like a slugger but doesn’t swing like one. He has six home runs, yet his average bat speed is just 68.7 MPH, which ranks in the 10th percentile and actually trails Nick Allen’s 68.8 MPH.
Smith has only 20 swings this season at 75 MPH or harder, the threshold Baseball Savant uses for “fast swings.” Joey Bart, who has been with the Braves for less than two weeks and has only 29 plate appearances, already has more fast swings than Smith.
Since bat speed tracking began in 2023, Smith has only five swings at 80 MPH or above, and three of them have come this season.
In Other News...
Braves Make Another Late Pitching Change Before Lineup Shuffle
The Braves were still adjusting their plan right up until game time against the Cardinals, with the pitching staff getting another late tweak and the lineup following suit. Atlanta also shuffled its order in a noticeable way, putting Drake Baldwin at the top and giving Brewer Hicklen a start in right field, the kind of move that signals both urgency and a willingness to keep mixing and matching as the night approaches.
Jim Jarvis was back at shortstop, Dominic Smith was slotted into the middle of the order, and the Braves had a few bats with encouraging history against Cardinals starter Dustin May. Austin Riley was among the names carrying that track record, which gives Atlanta at least some reason to feel good about the matchup even with the pregame uncertainty hanging over the card. [Read more 🡒]
Braves Have Only A Couple Real Deadline Answers Behind Chris Sale
With Chris Sale at the front of the rotation, the Braves still have a familiar deadline problem: finding another starter who can pitch near the top of a playoff staff and still fit into a longer window. The market for that kind of arm is thin enough that the discussion keeps circling back to the same two names, Joe Ryan and Logan Webb, both of whom check the control box and both of whom would come with the kind of price that forces a front office to think hard about what it is willing to move.
Ryan offers the cleaner trade path in some ways because of his team control through 2027, but that also comes with a hefty future cost even before any deal is made. Webb is the more established answer, locked in on a five-year extension through 2029, which only underscores how difficult it would be to pry him loose. For Atlanta, the question is not whether either pitcher would help. It is how much of the system the Braves are willing to spend to get one of the few real answers behind Sale. [Read more 🡒]
Braves Just Bet On Another High Upside Arm Fans Know Takes Patience
The Braves kept leaning into a familiar draft formula by taking another arm with real upside but plenty of development ahead. Their latest addition is a tall prep right-hander whose fastball already lives in the low 90s and whose slider gives him a pitch to build around, the kind of profile Atlanta has often been willing to wait on if the long-term ceiling is worth it.
What comes next is the part that usually matters most with this type of pick, because the path is rarely quick or linear. He is expected to start his pro career in the Florida Complex League, and for a club that has shown patience with young pitchers before, the bigger question is how much runway hell need before his stuff and command start pointing toward the middle-rotation future scouts think is in play. [Read more 🡒]