Matt Olson spent his baseball career trying to erase the slugger identity attached to his name.
At 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, the label followed him everywhere. Long before Olson became one of baseball’s most feared power hitters, evaluators saw towering raw power, long levers and tape-measure home runs.
The numbers only reinforced it. Olson crushed 24 homers in just 59 games as a 23-year-old rookie with the Oakland Athletics, quickly establishing himself as one of the sport’s premier power threats. Despite the production, Olson never liked being confined to the slugger box.
“I always remember seeing a video of Ken Griffey Jr., and he said, ‘I’m not a power hitter. I’m a hitter with power.’ Obviously, I think you want to become a better [complete] hitter,” Olson said during a phone interview this week.
Mighty Matt
Matt Olson’s 2026 stats through 39 games
|
Home runs |
13 |
T-1st |
|
OPS |
1.032 |
2nd |
|
SLG |
.653 |
2nd |
| Doubles | 15 | 1st |
Now in his 11th MLB season and fifth with the Braves, the 32-year-old Olson might finally be reshaping that perception. Entering Saturday, Olson is slashing .293/.379/.653 with a 186 OPS+ and 13 home runs in 39 games. Those 13 homers tie him with Kyle Schwarber for the National League lead, and Olson hit the 300th of his career earlier this week against the Mariners.
“It’s one of those little milestone numbers,” Olson said on reaching the 300-homer mark. “It’s funny, I was, I was talking to somebody, and it’s like this big old cool thing. And then nobody’s going to care about 301.”
What Olson cares about, though, is the swing. Getting from point A to point B in a timely manner. It’s a swing that can prove arduous, “a gift and curse,” Olson called it, considering his tall stature. While it yielded power, it also yielded holes.
But in 2026, many of those holes disappeared. His contact rate climbed to 79%, the highest mark of his career, while his swinging-strike rate dropped to 9%, also a career best.
“I just call it the recall,” Braves hitting coach Tim Hyers said. “He understands how teams pitch him. Or even the flow of the game. He’s playing chess, and some other guys are playing checkers, as far as the strategy. But it’s not that you’re just looking for things in game planning, but also you have to have the confidence and go out there and do it and the courage to do it.”
Olson always approached hitting like a student. Learning long remained embedded in his background. His mother, Lee, is an elementary school teacher. His brother, Zach, played baseball at Harvard. Olson himself committed to Vanderbilt before the Athletics selected him in the first round of the 2012 MLB Draft.
So when Olson feels his swing drifting or believes there’s another layer of his game left to unlock, his instinct is to study it.
How Olson tweaked his swing
This offseason, Olson essentially went back to school.
Despite hitting .272 with 29 homers and an .850 OPS last season, Olson thought his swing fell out of sync. His hips drifted forward while his torso leaned back, leaving him in what he described as a reverse-K position.
The timing became inconsistent. He found himself getting underneath high fastballs, while breaking balls caused him to lose direction toward the baseball.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in my career trying to fix my swing path when things are going wrong,” Olson said. “And I think just the more at-bats and more reps I get, the more I’ve started to realize that a lot of it is a product of that body position.”
That realization landed Olson here. Not just as a slugger, but as a far more complete hitter than the one who first arrived in Oakland with towering raw power and noticeable swing-and-miss.
That version of Olson still carried enormous value. 35 homers and 100 RBI annually plays in any era. But this version is different. More controlled. More connected. More capable of surviving the stretches that once consumed him.
“It is special and just a smooth swing,” Hyers said. “He’s got long levers and a big body, but it’s very smooth. He controls his body really well to be a big guy. I think that’s the part that gives him an advantage because he organizes his body really well, and it’s very smooth.”
Olson and the Braves have the second-best record in baseball at 26-13 despite injuries throughout their starting rotation. With Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley both opening the season slowly, much of the offensive burden shifted toward Olson.
That hasn’t fazed him.
Olson entered Friday with 300 career home runs, including 159 in parts of five seasons with Atlanta. The trajectory now naturally invites another question: just how high can the total climb?
“I’m not going to count anything out,” Olson said when asked if he could reach 500 home runs.
For years, Olson was defined primarily by his power. Now, he’s becoming the hitter he always knew he could become.
The power is still ever-present. The holes aren’t.
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