Braves Keeping Faith in Austin Riley as Potential Turnaround Emerges

As the season marches on, Austin Riley might be starting to turn the corner. He’s not putting the ball in the stands yet, but the at-bats are looking better. The Atlanta Braves’ third baseman is seeing the ball drop for a hit more often.

It wasn’t that long ago, less than a week ago, that we were highlighting how the dominant spring training performance by no means translated to the regular season. It still hasn’t, but the quality of those recent at-bats is starting to show something encouraging.

Riley has reached base in each of his last four games. He’s had two multi-hit games in his last three games, and has tallied two total bases in each of those three games.

“Even a few games before he started getting the hits, I thought some of the swings were better,” manager Walt Weiss said ahead of Friday’s 11-5 win over the Guardians. “Some of the at-bats were better. I thought he was hitting in the right direction, and you know, I said after the game the other night, I’m not worried about Austin Riley.”

Weiss said that it’s easier to put the stats under the microscope early in the season. They’re still prone to major changes compared to later in the year.

“If you struggle for a week in June, nobody notices,” Weiss said.

Three or four games still don’t make a trend. It’s still fair to say this is encouraging. Maybe, just maybe, this season has a chance to be different. A lazy fly ball is still going to happen. A turnaround doesn’t mean he’ll never pop one up to first base again this season.

This is a game of averages and trends. Right now, those averages are starting to lean back in his favor. It’s helped translate to his team winning three games in a row. How he’s looking now could start to translate to more home runs and shots in the gaps.

For those who have seen the movie Major League, and I’m using this example on purpose because they’re playing Cleveland, and Friday’s game was 80s night, that’s called a winning streak. It’s happened before. Riley succeeding at the plate has happened before, too, and to raging success. Perhaps that can happen again.

Overall on the year, Riley is batting .224 with a .599 OPS. Both those stats are well up from the .162 average and .451 OPS he had on Tuesday. As Weiss said, this is the time of year when the numbers can change in a hurry.