At halfway point, Braves not in panic mode after bad June

The Braves have completed half the 2026 season (plus a game), and the cup has water in it. Whether that cup is half full or half empty is the issue at hand.

After 82 games, the Braves are 49-33 and in first place in the NL East. However, their division lead over the rival Phillies has shrunk from a season-high 10½ games on May 22 to three at the start of this week. And after a 1-5 road trip they have lost 12 of 16 games and are 9-13 in June.

Starting pitching, offense, defense, it’s all been bad the past couple of weeks. The Phillies, meanwhile, are 35-18 since the start of May and have gone 17-8 this month.

There is no panic inside the Braves clubhouse, even though there may be plenty outside it.

“This is sports, professional sports. This is Major League Baseball. I don’t know if anyone’s gone tip to tip without losing a couple series or going through a 10- to 15-game hard stretch,” Braves’ veteran pitching ace Chris Sale said Sunday. “You know these things are coming. You obviously don’t know when they’re gonna come. We just got to do our best to kind of get out of it.

“We’re not losing games because we’re not good enough; we’re not losing games because we’re quitting. The effort’s still there, the fight’s still there. It’s just not showing up on the field right now. It’s part of the game, and I know fans aren’t probably the biggest fan of hearing that. But we do have to kind of get things going and find a way to get over that. Let’s not get complacent with what it is.”

Sale wasn’t at fault in June for the team’s starting pitching struggles. His six innings of work Sunday at Oracle Park in San Francisco — where he struck out 10 and kept the Braves in a game they eventually lost 3-2 — continued his Cy Young-worthy season. Two costly errors that came during Sale’s outing led to the Giants’ first two runs.

Fellow starting mate Bryce Elder had an 8.10 ERA in June. Spencer Strider landed on the injured list after his June 12 start in New York. Grant Holmes made four June starts and had a 4.96 ERA. Martín Pérez has continued to be a saving grace for the staff, but Reynaldo López, JR Ritchie and the newly returned Hurston Waldrep have been a roll of the dice when it comes to consistent results.

Offensively, the Braves had a June batting average of .214 and scored just 74 runs, at 3.4 runs per game. They scored 4.9 runs per game in May and 5.5 in the 32 games across March and April.

“We played well for a couple months, we haven’t played well in June. That’s pretty much what it’s come down to,” Braves manager Walt Weiss put it bluntly. “I think we had the best offense in baseball the first month-and-a-half, two months, and we’ve been one of the worst here in June. It’s been a been a tough month after a couple really good ones.”

First baseman Matt Olson said: “We obviously haven’t been scoring the way we were earlier in the year. I always say hitting is kind of contagious sometimes. It’s always one big swing, one big inning away from just flipping the switch. Just gotta continue to work and keep grinding at every pitch, and tides will turn.”

Olson will be a candidate for the National League’s player of the month after hitting .317 in June. But, like Sale on the pitching side, Olson has been one of the lone bright spots offensively (Ozzie Albies and Mauricio Dubón deserve their flowers, too).

Austin Riley’s season-long struggles have continued at a .222 June clip. Drake Baldwin spent some time on the injured list with a strained oblique and is now 0-for-33 since June 17.

And the Braves inexplicably continue to trot Ha-Seong Kim out to start at shortstop. Kim is now hitting .068 this season after his 0-for-8 weekend in San Francisco where Weiss said, “I thought this was a good time to give him a run.”

It must be noted that Baldwin, hitting .303 on May 18, missed the first 11 games of June. Right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr. (hamstring) hasn’t played since June 9.

It’s expected Acuna will be back in July.

“We got some reinforcements on the way, but every team deals with this stuff, every team has to deal with missing players and injuries and all that stuff,” Weiss said. “You got to find a way to get through it.”

The Braves are still on pace to win just fewer than 100 games. Baseball Reference gives the team a 99.4% chance to reach the playoffs. FanGraphs have the odds at 94.6%. Baseball Prospectus has the Braves’ playoff chances at 94.2%.