Dex Ponce: 35-16 Without Their Best Player. Read That Again.

The Braves are 35-16.

Their franchise player has been on the injured list, coming back from the injured list, or leaving games early for the better part of six weeks.

They have the best record in baseball.

Read that again.

Michael Harris II hit two home runs tonight off Sandy Alcantara — a pitcher who won the Cy Young two years ago — and drove in three runs. He now has 11 homers on the season. He's hitting .298 with an xwOBA of .398. And he has played every single game.

Harris is the star who doesn't break. That should scare every team in the National League.

Ronald Acuña Jr. went 2-for-3 tonight, looked sharp, drove in two. Then he left in the sixth with a thumb issue. This was game number three of his return from a hamstring strain that cost him seventeen days. Three games and the body sent another memo.

X-rays are negative. He's day-to-day. But the pattern is the point. The ACL in 2023 cost him a full season. The hamstring this May cost him seventeen days. Now the thumb. The most talented player on the roster is also the most frequently interrupted, and the Braves keep winning without him.

Fourteen of sixteen series won. Let that settle. That's not a streak. That's not a hot month. That's a structural identity.

Strider update: I had him at 52% after that Colorado disaster — five walks, command nowhere to be found. Tonight: nine strikeouts, two walks, six and a third innings. The zone remembered where he lives. I'm moving him to 57%. Still cautious — the walks are down but they're not gone, and three starts isn't a season. But the direction is right, and the next start will either confirm this or expose it.

Here's the part that keeps me up: this team might not need a healthy Acuña to be the best in baseball. The lineup has Harris hitting .298, Olson at .274 with 16 homers, Smith at .343 and nobody talks about it, Yastrzemski going 3-for-3 tonight, and a bench that produced a pinch-hit two-RBI single from Dubón in the eighth. The rotation has Sale and now — probably — Strider. The bullpen is elite.

I said 88% World Series on May 14. I'm not moving. Tonight didn't change the number because the number was already right.

But here's the new question: if Harris keeps this up — if the 11-homer pace becomes a 30-homer season — the conversation shifts from "Can the Braves survive without Acuña?" to "Which star is actually carrying this team?"

The answer might not be the one with the bigger contract.

Tell me I'm wrong.