Walt Weiss gives Matt Olson the superstar tag following walk-off win
The Atlanta Braves appear to be back in that mode that we were used to seeing from a lot of these players during their run to the World Series in 2021 and their extremely successful regular seasons in 2022 and 2023. This is a squad that’s going to be incredibly competitive for all 27 outs of any given game and indeed, the Tigers and their struggling bullpen ( Kenley Jansen in particular) got another example of it after the Braves won in walk-off fashion to pick up the series win on Wednesday night.
The walk-off blow came from Matt Olson, who has been swinging the bat as well as anybody in baseball at the moment. Going into Wednesday night’s action, Olson was tied with Bobby Witt Jr. , Ben Rice and Nico Hoerner for fourth place in fWAR among all qualified players and tied for first in that same department among first basemen with Rice. Olson was also sitting in the top five in wRC+ among qualified hitters with 169 so far and that number is now at 175 after he clubbed the walk-off dinger that propelled the Braves to a come-from-behind victory.
It was also Olson’s first walk-off home run as a member of the Braves — which is kind of wild to think about considering that he’s been here since 2022. This was the first time he’d done it since July 24, 2020 which means that this was actually his first time doing it in front of fans since all the way back in 2019, which is when he went deep off of then-Milwaukee Brewers closer Josh Hader in order to send all the Oakland A’s fans home that night. This time, Olson got to do it in front of his hometown crowd for his hometown team.
Simply put, the Braves are playing with a ton of confidence right now and it’s showing based on the overwhelming positive results that they’ve been getting so far. I asked Olson in the post-game press conference where his confidence level was at at the moment and it’s clear that the level was very high at the moment.
“Obviously success is going to breed confidence — personally and as a team,” responded Olson. “It’s nicer when you’re playing winning baseball and you don’t feel like you have to be the guy every single night. That takes stuff off your plate and it actually helps everybody in the lineup. If we keep winning ballgames, hopefully we can keep snowballing this confidence until the end of the year.”
Olson was also asked by the media about how it feels to be winning all of these games in every type of fashion — but especially the dramatic fashion like this as well. Olson’s response seemed to indicate that the confidence is coming from multiple angles at this point and it really feels like they’re on a serious roll at the moment.
“Yeah it starts to feel like [we can find a way to win any game], the more wins you put together that way,” stated Olson. “I said the other day that we’ve had innings where we’ve put up five, six and seven-spots. It makes you feel like you’re in every ballgame when you feel like you can do that.”
Kenley Jansen suffered his third blown save of the season already and his second blown save in a row after the Reds walked him off back on April 24. While there may have been a bit of familiarity there for Olson since he and Jansen were teammates back in 2022, he did tell the media that it was still pretty tough to deal with the cutter.
“His cutter is his best pitch. I saw Ozzie swing over the top of a couple of them so I was wondering if it wasn’t getting that carry today,” noted Olson. “Especially when [Ozzie] was on first, I was trying to keep the double play out of order and set my sights a little higher than I typically would. He kind of just left it over the middle.”
He left it over the middle and Olson got just enough of it to send it into the bullpen and send Truist Park into a state of delirium. Manager Walt Weiss was asked about how he felt about the whole situation and whether or not this version of Olson is the best he’d ever seen him. While Weiss was hesitant to go that far, he still had a ton of praise for his star first baseman.
“I want to be careful about saying that this is as good as I’ve seen him because ‘23 was ridiculous but he’s swinging the bat really well,” stated Weiss. “He’s hitting balls into the left-center gap, he’s hitting homers, he’s just a really good hitter and man, that was a big at-bat there against Kenley Jansen. I felt like a few of the swings he had in that at-bat earlier, I felt like he was timed-up with Kenley there. He’s one of the greatest closers of our generation and he put together a heck of an at-bat.”
“He’s got long levers and it’s got some big moves in his swing. I’m sure it takes some maitenance to keep the timing element right but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. He’s one of the better players in the game, really, when you start looking at the whole package. What he does on defense…Matt Olson’s a superstar.”
At the moment, Matt Olson sure is playing like a superstar. On a Braves team that isn’t lacking for star power, Olson’s certainly been delivering the power as a star player for this team. While the Braves are getting contributions from all caliber of players, it’s been important for guys like Olson, Drake Baldwin and Ozzie Albies (who homered off of Tarik Skubal to initially put the Braves ahead on Wednesday night) to get the job done. It’s even better when you consider how Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley are still struggling to really find their footing at the moment.
As long as Matt Olson and the rest of the core (and the whole squad, really) can pick up the slack and pull their fair share of the weight then there’s every reason to believe that the winning can continue on for a good long while. Matt Olson’s first walk-off homer for the Braves was a special one and hopefully it won’t be the last one, either!
