​Past summaries:So far, so good through mid-AprilEven better in late AprilMay-be they’re just really goodLate May just good, rather than absurdly awesomeA June swoon so farThe Braves went 6-6 in July before the All-Star Break. 6-6 is… okay. The Braves went 6-5 in the first half of June, well before any alarm bells sounded. Lots of teams go .500ish in a short stretch. The Dodgers were 5-6! The Brewers were 7-6! The Marlins and Phillies both went 6-5, gaining just a half-game on the Braves. Meanwhile, a bunch of previously-moribund squads did really well. It’s 12ish games, anything can happen.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIs going 6-6 a springboard for recovering from June’s plunge into the abyssal depths of teamwide non-production? Well, ehhhhhh.On the one hand, the Braves finished eighth in position player fWAR over the first part of July. Yay, the offense returned. If you recall, my one big fulcrum point is this: if the Braves hit like a top-ten team from July-on, they’ll make the playoffs. If they don’t, they won’t. They did in these 12 games, right? So, what’s the concern?Well, the concern is that despite a better (12th in wOBA/wRC+) set of outputs in July, their inputs were still woeful: 21st in xwOBA, with a .299 mark. For a team that finished 29th in MLB in June in xwOBA (.283), this was not exactly heartening. Yeah, they faked it to a 6-6 record in July. The needed improvement on a team-wide wasn’t actually there if you peek even a tiny bit under the surface.Did the pitching do anything to help? No, no it did not. Recall that in April, May, and June, the team’s pitching fWAR ranks went from 10th, to 13th, to 19th. In July so far? 21st. 18th in ERA-, 23rd in FIP-, and 21st in xFIP-. The bullpen continued to be a rock, finishing second in MLB in fWAR in this pre-All Star Break-part-of-July stretch. But the rotation was sub-replacement level.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementGame-by-game odds-wise, going 6-6 is exactly what was expected. WAR-wins-wise, 6-6 is also exactly what was expected. There was nothing all that weird in these 12 games… except that the Braves massively outhit their xwOBA and yeah they probably need to hit better to have a shot of keeping a playoff spot.The season position for the Braves right now is really weird, and deserves some space of its own.The residuals from early in the season are banked. The Braves have MLB’s fourth-best record, fifth-highest playoff odds, and seventh-highest championship odds. They have a two-game lead in the division, and are five games “up” on holding a playoff spot.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOn the season, they are 16th in position player value, including 12th in offensive inputs, somewhere between 17th-19th in offensive outputs depending on what you count, and eighth in defensive value. They are 15th in pitching value, though fifth in ERA- to go with being 15th in FIP- and 12 in xFIP-. The rotation is 23rd in fWAR, but the bullpen ranks