There is no chase rate contest

(Note: data are through Tuesday’s series opener against the Tigers only — the awkward timing of Thursday’s day game will make the data two games out of date by the time this runs.)

In the near-perpetual gloom that was the Atlanta Braves 2025 season, there was a chase rate contest. Maybe. I think there was a chase rate contest because I heard it on the broadcast. Brandon Gaudin and C.J. Nitkowski talked about how then-new hitting coach Tim Hyers and the players had implemented one, with Braves players grouped by handedness (where did Ozzie Albies fit in? who knows?) and competing to see who could chase less (as a percentage of swings, or total chases? who knows?). When he was first hired (hyerd?), Hyers said that one of his orienting principles was, “You’re only as good as the strikes you swing at.” There are a lot of ways to take that, but as a guy that touted swing decisions as a key factor in his early-days-with-the-Braves pressers, it aligns to a meta-game of not chasing.

On the flip side, maybe there wasn’t a chase rate contest. Maybe it was never as concrete as the broadcast made it out to be. Maybe it only existed for a brief period, and then fell apart amid either the knowledge of such being spread to opposing teams, or the fact that the Braves’ offense (and the season) spiraled the proverbial drain fairly quickly. Maybe it’s just me, but when I search or query the internet writ large for “Braves chase rate contest” or a variant, the only thing I really get is, well, my own writing. Maybe I hallucinated it. Maybe I’m hallucinating this. It’s been a tough few years, woof.

Meanwhile, in the near-perpetual beach day that’s been the Atlanta Braves 2026 season so far, there is no chase rate contest. No, really, there is no chase rate contest. Tim Hyers is still the hitting coach, the only topline coach to survive a robust staff turnover in the offseason. The chase rate contest? I bet you wouldn’t have even remembered that maybe it existed if I hadn’t brought it up.

I’m gonna show you some stuff. It’s early days for 2026 yet, but still, it’s all in service of the title.

It’s not that the Braves were, in recent history, some kind of prodigious set of boors or rude boys. 2019 was the first year of what we jokingly/wistfully refer to as Braves_PowerPoint.pptx, and they had a below-average chase rate that year. It was average in 2021, and then hovering in above-average territory, but not egregiously so. Then you get 25, and well… chase rate contest? 2026 has been a hard reversal, though.

(A small procedural note which may be of more interest to you than the rest of this post. Due to the implementation of ABS, there are now a bunch of nascent if minor data problems. Or, more accurately, we are now nascently, or perhaps just more keenly, aware of prior minor data problems. FanGraphs now includes two different sets of plate discipline data from Statcast — “Legacy” and “ABS.” These differ, but not by much. Further, per an exchange with Ben Clemens earlier this week, it looks like the prior implementation of the Statcast strike zone was not consistent pitch-to-pitch for the same player (but is now consistent with ABS), and as a result, there are some minor weirdnesses with what “chase” meant pre-2026 compared to 2026. For that reason, I’m skipping literally all of this and its implications and simply using ranks and z-scores so that actual rates don’t matter.)

Of course, no one commits to chasing. Some guys might have swings that can not only reach, but do serious damage on, pitchers that aren’t rulebook (or likely) strikes, but generally, higher chase is the result of other decisions and processes, not something targeted in and of itself. A lot of times, it helps to contextualize chase rate with the rate of swinging at strikes.

The below is a plot of all teams from 2024. I could do earlier ones, but I think you’ll get the idea.

The 2024 Braves are the red dot, the other teams, are, well… the other teams. The 2024 Braves swung at strikes more than anyone, and they swung at balls at an above-average rate. They swung a lot, basically.

Alright, here’s 2025. It’s certainly different!

Did the Braves succeed at being more selective? They sure did! They joined a bunch of other teams that were similarly chase avoidant-ish while offering at an above-average number of strikes. We know it didn’t actually do them any good writ large, but they still did it.

Alright, let’s do 2026 so far. It’s more exaggerated in most directions because, well, the sample size is small, and differences between teams are magnified as a result.

I think this is kinda funny. The Braves are killing it offensively, but if you think about things purely in terms of swing decisions, it’s kind of unexpected. In 2024, they swung at way more strikes than anyone else (a full two standard deviations above the mean), with an elevated but non-dramatic chase (+0.5 standard deviations). In 2025, it was restrained/selective: +0.6 standard deviations for swinging at strikes, and -0.4 for chasing. 2026? +0.8 for swinging at strikes, and +1.4 for chasing, as shown in the table above. A purist might call it misplaced aggressiveness, but I think most will just call it, “Whatever it takes to rake” for now.

Of course, teams are just a composition of players, and the Braves have been fairly stable in their cast of characters, especially compared to other teams. So, even if we avoid overloading the synapses by doing just our little 2024-2025-2026 pseudo-round trip, then we get into below. And I’ll be honest, this is really funny to me, and hopefully to you.

In 2024, Acuña was more about not chasing than swinging at every strike. He actually chased more in 2025, but swung at fewer strikes. Oops. (He still posted a 161 wRC+ and a near-.400 xwOBA. It’s fine.) In 2026, he’s chasing more than in either of the past two years, and swinging at lots and lots of strikes. There is no chase rate contest, but if there were, he’d be useful at it.

Albies is unapologetically himself, through days of cornucopia and fallow periods both. Can you tell whether there was a chase rate contest based on Albies’ behavior? You could not. One way, and probably the correct way to read it? He would not be very useful to you in a chase rate contest.

Harris is also unapologetically himself, though as not-quite-a-veteran relative to Albies, we can’t blame him for some more variation. Like Albies, it’s not clear that he understood the idea of a chase rate contest… at least not in practice. When presumably coached around being more selective, he was instead… more aggressive. Hmm. Anyway, he’s chasing a bit less these days, though you’re probably aware that he’s re-broken out because he’s focusing on mashing the ball rather than not-doing-a-thing-he-was-incapable-of-doing-anyway (being more selective).

This one is kind of my favorite. In 2024, Olson had an average chase rate and swung at a lot of strikes. In 2025, Olson just swung less, which included swinging a lot less at strikes. In 2026, Olson is being passive ayy eff. Wait a minute! Isn’t this what we were complaining about in 2025? Well, Olson has a 169 wRC+ and a near-.400 xwOBA while losing more homers than anyone else to ballpark dimensions so far (which would’ve pushed his wRC+ to some kind of absurd level had they landed beyond fences), so…

(Maybe Olson thinks there’s still a chase rate contest? If so, he’s not actually doing as well as last year.)

Riley does his own thing, so his presence here (or on any similar exercise) will always be kind of strange. I won’t make any chase rate contest quips here, I’ll just say that from this, it’s pretty clear that Riley is still kind of adjusting to re-existing at the plate at this point, and if things keep up, he might pause a PA to break out in a rendition of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” before the All-Star Break.

Drake Baldwin once knew life under the oppressive atmosphere of the chase rate contest. Now that it’s gone, uh… well, he seems to be having a pretty good time either way.