Braves first baseman Matt Olson credits a little red machine for improving his game

June 07, 2024

The Braves are seeing a version of Matt Olson with a significantly reduced strikeout rate and higher contact rate than he produced before 2021, and their new first baseman gives plenty of credit for the improvements to former Braves player Tommy La Stella and a little red pitching machine.

“It’s called, like, Heater PowerAlley,” Olson said. “It’s about 150 bucks — well, it used to be; I think the demand has gone up for it. But yeah, Tommy, when he got traded over to the A’s, he brought it over. It was part of his routine and pretty much simulates good four-seam fastballs. Exaggerates them. And I was like, well, this guy never strikes out, and I struggle with four-seamers. So I tried it out and felt like it was something that I wanted to work in.”

The results have been nothing short of revelatory for Olson, who went from being a high-strikeout hitter to one with a modest whiff rate while hitting for a much higher average and even more power.

After posting career highs in average (.271), OBP (.371), doubles (35), home runs (39) and RBIs (111) in 2021, along with a career-high 88 walks and a full-season career-low 113 strikeouts, Olson is 8-for-16 with two doubles, one homer and more walks (five) than strikeouts (three) in his first five games for the Braves.

That’s a tiny sample and not anywhere near sustainable, but Olson has had a look about him at the plate since the day he joined Atlanta. He had three consecutive multi-hit games before going 0-for-2 with two walks Monday. The Braves mustered just four hits — two after the first inning — in an 11-2 series-opening loss to the Washington Nationals before the fourth sellout crowd in five games at Truist Park.

Huascar Ynoa got rocked for seven hits, five runs and two walks in three innings in his first start of the season for the Braves, who are 2-3.

Sunday against Cincinnati, Olson had three of the Braves’ seven hits, including a homer off rookie phenom Hunter Greene on a 101 mph fastball, the second-fastest pitch any Braves player had hit for a home run in the pitch-tracking era that began in 2008, according to MLB stats guru Sarah Langs. Olson, a 6-foot-5 left-handed hitter, drove it 417 feet, just to the left of straightaway center.

Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer has relished his first few weeks working with Olson.

“Oh, it’s been phenomenal,” the veteran coach said. “I mean, he’s just really impressed me all the way around — mentally, emotionally — with his routine, his batting practice, his plan of attack when he gets in the box. I can see why he’s had success. He’s got a real great routine in the cage, and he’s got this little machine that he uses … that helps him to hit elevated fastballs with the ride that keeps him short. It helped him a lot. He said he did it every day last year.”

Some background: Olson, an Atlanta-area native and Parkview High graduate, was in his fifth season with Oakland when the A’s traded for La Stella on Aug. 29, 2020. La Stella had been a first-time All-Star in 2019 with the Los Angeles Angels, hitting .295 with 16 homers and striking out just 28 times in 321 plate appearances, an extremely low whiff rate in today’s game.

La Stella finished with an even lower strikeout rate in 2020: 12 Ks in 228 at-bats with the Angels and A’s.

Meanwhile, Olson had 79 homers during 2018-2020, a rate of 37 homers per 162 games, but he hit .246 with a .337 OBP in that span and had 378 strikeouts with 155 walks in 1,452 plate appearances, for a strikeout rate of 175 per 162 games.

Enter La Stella, who brought with him to Oakland a lower-end version in the Heater brand of pitching machines. The PowerAlley Pro Real Baseball Machine retails for $159.99 at Amazon and Academy Sports.

“It’s, like, for 10-year-old kids,” Seitzer said. “I mean, you have to put it close in order for it to be hard enough. But it’s a cool little pitching machine.”

That’s right, a $160 device for kids has helped turn Olson from a whiff-prone slugger into one of the elite all-around hitters in baseball since the beginning of last season. The Braves traded four prospects for him on March 14, then signed Olson, 28, to an eight-year, $168 million contract extension the next day.

The PowerAlley looks small and rudimentary compared to pitching machines used by professional teams, or even those used by colleges and plenty of high school teams. But La Stella swears by it, and now Olson does, too, even if other Braves teammates have been reluctant to try it.

“It’s just a little bitty red machine. It’s made out of plastic that shoots these softer, baseball-sized balls,” Seitzer said. “He puts it about 20 feet away from him, and it throws gas. And he wants it, like, right at his letters. And it’s on you. Nobody else (among his teammates) wants to touch it, and he wears it out every day, right before the game. That’s his go-to right before the game. Comes in, gets 15 to 20 swings on it and, boom, he’s out (to the field).”

The little bitty machine Matt Olson swears by, pictured in the Braves’ batting cage at Truist Field. (David O’Brien / The Athletic)

Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson is one of those reluctant teammates. “Obviously, everyone finds their own niche. I have not tried it. I mean, you can’t know anything until you try it. I don’t know how big of a fan I’d be of hitting non-real baseballs because then when you hit a baseball, sometimes it feels like it’s a kagillion pounds.

“I do it my own way; I crank up the (regular pitching) machine real high. Just because the harder you can make it down there, the easier it tends to be in the game.”

But Swanson was quick to add that the red machine works for Olson. “He’s found something with that,” he said.

Olson estimated he sets up the machine 25-30 feet away. The proximity makes the below-average velocity of the fastballs it cranks out seem much higher because they’re on top of the hitter so quickly. He positions it to throw high fastballs.

“Yeah, it’s kind of an exaggeration drill, but I like it,” he said. “Because my swing can get a little long and I can get under four-seamers. So when I feel like I can get in there and get on top of that thing, I feel like I can go into the game and take my normal swing.”

Olson has seen marked improvement hitting high-velocity pitches since he began working with the machine in the final month of the 2020 season. Its effects have shown after he spent that offseason and the following spring using the machine as part of his routine.

“There’s times when I foul under (a fastball up in the strike zone), and I tell myself, ‘Treat it like the red machine,’” he said.

After posting a 34.8 percent whiff rate and 70.1 in-zone contact rate in 2020, Olson had a 23 percent whiff rate and 81.6 percent in-zone contact rate in 2021. It’s early, but he’s better in both categories so far this season.

“He’s phenomenal,” Braves pitcher Ian Anderson said. “He’s going the other way (opposite field). You only see the highlights of his past years; it’s all pull-side home runs. You kind of just build up in your head what he is, but to watch him go the other way, it’s been great. It’s been fun to watch. He’s got a great eye — kind of shows how his OPS has been so high the last couple of years.”

When Olson hits off the PowerAlley machine, he uses white dimpled polyurethane balls specifically designed for the device, which are the same size as baseballs but half the weight. Seitzer said he’d never seen one of the machines before Olson arrived.

“You can use our Hack Attack machines too,” Seitzer said, referring to an advanced pitching machine used by the Braves that costs many times more than the Heater ProAlley. “But he likes this one because it sits low, so it gets that elevated rise to it where he’s got to get on top. And depending on the pitcher, he’ll adjust to what height he wants it at, how they’re gonna attack him.”

Swanson noticed that elevation aspect of the PowerAlley machine and thinks he sees how it’s helped Olson.

“It gives the illusion of — you know how guys spin the ball real well? It gives that same illusion,” Swanson said. “I think that’s why it helps so much. Because it, like, gives that kind of rise-ball illusion.”

(Photo: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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