Matt Olson usually bats two spots behind Drake Baldwin, and the two Braves spend brief moments in the dugout talking about pitching and swing adjustments. It is a small routine, but it has become part of why Atlanta’s offense keeps rolling as the team opens its fourth homestand Tuesday with a three-game series against the Chicago Cubs.
The Braves are running away with the National League East, and their offense has been the best in the sport. Olson, 32, has 14 home runs and 36 runs batted in while slashing.296/.377/.654 with a 178 wRC+. Baldwin, 25, has added 10 home runs and is hitting.297/.383/.509 in his second year, production that helps explain why the middle of Atlanta’s order keeps forcing pitchers into mistakes. Olson called Baldwin one of the best bat-to-ball guys he has played with, and he said Baldwin seems to be putting it on the barrel almost every at-bat.
Baldwin’s season has been more than a hot start. He leads the majors with 17 hits on pitches outside the strike zone, has a.965 OPS against left-handed pitching and has slugged.410 in two-strike counts. That is the kind of output Atlanta expected when it drafted him, and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos said Baldwin’s work is simply a continuation of what he did last year, adding that it was expected.
That expectation matters because the Braves did not arrive here cleanly. Their seven consecutive playoff appearances ended in 2025 after a rough season, they opened that year with an 0-7 record and later stumbled through an 8-17 July. Ha-Seong Kim broke a finger in January after slipping on ice, Jurickson Profar was suspended for 162 games in March after a second PED violation, and Spencer Strider, Hurston Waldrep, Spencer Schwellenbach and Joey Wentz were all injured before the regular season even started. FanGraphs gave Atlanta only a 36% chance to win the division on Opening Day.
The gap between that outlook and what has followed is the sharp edge of this team. Atlanta won 25 of its first 35 games and has lost only one of 13 series, a run that has turned the club into one of the league’s most efficient and relentless offenses. Baldwin’s emergence, alongside Olson’s usual damage, is a big reason the Braves have been able to bury the memory of last year while they keep pushing into a home stretch that now looks like it belongs to them.
The next few days should tell whether the Cubs can slow that pace. If they cannot, the Braves will keep doing what they have done best: turning a season that once looked fragile into one that now feels controlled.
