Where did Matt Olson's power go?

Matt Olson is undoubtedly one of baseball’s best power hitters. Only Aaron Judge (304) and Kyle Schwarber (258) have more home runs than Olson (253) since his rookie season in 2017. 

And yet, as the calendar nears September, Olson’s power numbers read like a typo: He has just 23 home runs, a staggering decrease from the league-best 54 home runs he hit a year ago. He’s running a career-low SLG (.432), above just the measly .132 SLG he posted in 11 games at the end of the 2016 season, his first taste of the big leagues. His ISO is down .118 points, the fourth-largest drop-off in baseball. 

Even with an encouraging August (.528 SLG, .868 OPS), Olson’s production is incredibly atypical. It’s a massive reason why the Braves, a year after touting a record-breaking offense, are merely pedestrian, averaging 4.3 runs per game. 

So, where did Olson’s power go? 

On the surface, Olson’s batted-ball profile — both in terms of contact and type — hasn’t changed much at all. In that lens, he resembles the same Olson, pulling a decent number of fly balls, while also spraying the ball to all fields. 

But if we look closer into his SLG, the problem begins to reveal itself. 

Olson’s SLG, by portion of field	Pull	Center	Opposite
2023	.970 (10th)	.758 (13th)	.729 (22nd)
2024	.793 (56th)	.456 (144th)	.628 (51st)

Olson’s power production has dipped to all three fields. But remember, this is a player whose power has fallen off a cliff. So let’s spend our time looking at the part of the field where his SLG has also fallen off a cliff — the middle portion of the field. 

This was a staple of Olson’s game last season. On balls hit to the middle of the field, he posted the ninth-highest ISO (1.1.25) in baseball; now, his ISO on those balls sits at 88th in baseball. Similarly, his SLG has fallen from 13th to 144th (of 281 qualified hitters). It’s the worst single-season mark of Olson’s career, by a pretty healthy margin. 

As we see in his spray chart, a large chunk of Olson’s production in the middle of the field comes from fly balls. 

Olson's 2024 Spray Chart

Olson's 2023 Spray Chart

The stats and the eye test align. Olson isn’t hitting straightaway flies as hard this year (from 99.1 MPH to 94.1 MPH), reducing their average distance by 30 feet (from 354 to 324). His launch angle on these balls has increased from 36 to 38 degrees, with all three factors contributing to Olson’s power outage. 

To be clear, these changes aren’t limited to the middle of the field. Across the board, Olson is hitting the ball less hard: His Hard Hit% is down 8.8% (sixth-most in baseball),

and his Average Exit Velocity is down (from 93.7 MPH to 91.5 MPH) on any contact. 

But the effects are most-pronounced in the middle of the field. Last September, in an article for FanGraphs, Ben Clemens explored this phenomenon through Isaac Paredes, the unconventionally-pull-happy third baseman. While Paredes doesn’t hit the ball hard, he intentionally eschews other areas of the field, thereby maximizing his success simply because the pull side allows for it. 

“In the middle velocity bands, well-struck but not crushed fly balls, which way you hit it matters a ton,” Clemens wrote. “If you truly demolish it, any direction will do. A different way of stating what’s going right for Paredes — and wrong for our band of sluggers — is that you make solid but not overwhelming contact, you’d be well-served to pull it.” 

Clemens’ conclusion lies at the crux of Olson’s struggles. Olson is used to making elite-level contact. In five of the last seven seasons, his Average Exit Velocity has ranked in the 90th percentile or better. Last year, his EV (93.7 MPH) was the second-best in baseball, trailing only his teammate, Ronald Acuna Jr. In fact, Olson’s mark was good for the fifth-best EV of any player in a single season in the last five years! 

So when you’re simply clobbering the baseball, you can get away with hitting the ball in the air to all fields. And again, Olson does pull the ball a lot. But he’s lost such a substantial amount of his production in the middle of the field because of Clemens’ premise. The well-struck balls don’t play as well when they’re not pulled, and that’s what Olson is hitting now — well-struck balls. 

Clemens considers the “middle velocity bands” as anything between 90 and 105 mph, meaning that anything over 105 mph is crushed. Let’s apply that delineation to anything that Olson hits in the air — pop-ups, line drives, and fly balls — to the middle of the field, and see where that leaves us. 

Olson’s career numbers on any aerial contact to the middle of the field, by velocity	SLG	wOBA
EV < 90	.209	.175
90 < EV < 94	.357	.250
95 < EV < 99	.263	.194
100 < EV < 104	.803	.463
EV > 105	2.168	1.198

That’s pretty stark. Anything under 99 mph is largely worthless, between 100 and 104 is more of a strong suit, and anything over 105 is a huge boon. But, as we know, Olson isn’t hitting balls in that elusive, final EV band to the middle of the field this year. 

• EV > 105 MPH

  • 2023 — 18-for-23

  • 2024 — 4-for-6

• EV < 105 MPH

  • 2023 — 2-for-25

  • 2024 — 2-for-23

    
    

I want to circle back to an article from early May, written by The Athletic’s David O’Brien. In it, O’Brien quotes Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer talking about Olson’s woes and, specifically, his lack of concern. 

“There were some balls that I thought should have been homers and extra-base hits that are getting caught so far this season,” Seltzer told O’Brien. “You can blame the weather all you want, but I’m not buying that one. The ball (Olson) smoked in Seattle was 108 or 109 the other way, and it’s like it didn’t even get to the warning track.” 

Seitzer is referencing this play, when Olson takes an elevated fastball from Luis Castillo and hammers it towards left-center. Castillo doesn’t turn and watch, because he thinks Olson covered it. Seitzer thought so, too. But then something weird happens: The ball dies on the warning track, run down effortlessly by Luke Raley. 

And this is where Seitzer is wrong. The ball wasn’t hit at 108 or 109 MPH, but rather 105.2 MPH, putting it right on the edge of a “middle” velocity band and a “crushed” velocity band. Just judging from the way everyone reacted, we can discern this is a ball that Olson usually covers. But, as is the story of his 2024 season, everything is being hit just a little less hard — and on balls that aren’t pulled, that makes all the difference. 

Let’s say Olson did hit that Castillo fastball at 108 MPH and, well, chances are, he’d have succeeded: He has a 1.900 SLG on balls hit over 108 MPH, similar to the 2.000 SLG he posted on those balls last season. But, he’s hit just 30 such balls this year, less than half of his total (65) from a year ago. 

So we know that Olson isn’t hitting the ball as hard, and that’s sagging his production on anything hit to the middle of the field. But why isn’t he hitting the ball as hard? 

There isn’t a clear answer here. Olson’s bat speed (73.7 MPH) is still well above average. He’s swinging more than ever (career-best 50.1% Swing%), while making more contact, despite running a career-worst 29.4% Chase%. 

Without diving too far in, one possible explanation lies within the way teams are pitching Olson. Last year, Olson clobbered anything — particularly fastballs — low in the strike zone. But this year, he’s found less power in these zones, in part because he’s not receiving as many fastballs there. Pitchers are peppering him with fastballs that are either further up in the zone or further inside, making it more difficult for him to drive them to all parts of the field, because they’re not in the direct path of Olson’s long, fluid swing. And the pitches that he's chasing are often running in on his hands, which are intuitively more difficult to hit anywhere but the pull side with authority.

As we mentioned at the beginning, Olson’s August numbers have improved, offering up some cautious optimism that he may rebound for the stretch run. But for now, it’s a staggering power outage, and unless Olson starts hitting the ball harder, we may not see much of a difference.