Austin Riley producing despite Braves’ slump (2024)

Austin Riley is inconsistently consistent.

Just so we’re clear, that’s definitely not a bad thing. It’s certainly a better fan experience than someone who is consistently inconsistent. Consistently inconsistent players often have immense upside, but you can’t necessarily rely on them for star-level production every year. For instance, Matt Olson’s Braves tenure has been consistently inconsistent - year 1 he was good, not great. Year 2 he was superlative. And unfortunately, year 3 has been a stinker thus far. There’s an incredible player in there, but you can’t be sure that you’re going to get that guy in any given season. (We still love Matt Olson around here and have confidence that he’ll be great going forward.)

Worse still are the inconsistently inconsistent players, those who show flashes of brilliance but can’t seem to sustain them for more than a week and ultimately end up with below average production most years. If you want an example of an inconsistently inconsistent player, just close your eyes and picture basically any Braves outfielder that you’ve seen play in the last couple of months since Ronald Acuña Jr. and Michael Harris II got hurt.

Then there are those special guys like Max Fried, and Acuña Jr. (when healthy). As much as is possible in a game such as baseball, those three are consistently consistent. Their cold streaks are almost always quite bearable, and their hot streaks are extremely fun to watch. Even their “down” years are still very good, and the underperformance in those years is typically driven more by bad luck than bad process (see: Acuña 2022, Freeman 2021).

And finally, there’s Austin Riley. Inconsistently consistent. This may come as a shock to you, but Riley’s a bit streaky. He may spend a considerable amount of time during any given year looking like an actually bad player, like he did to start 2024 when he had a 74 wRC+ and just 3 home runs through June 13th. Or you may recall when he won NL Player of the Month in July of 2022, signed a franchise record $212M contract, and then went on to produce just a 102 wRC+ over his next 132 games stretching deep into June of 2023. He’ll go through long stretches where his swing decisions leave you scratching your head, and sometimes it seems like he might be genuinely blind to a specific pitch type. Those stretches can be maddening to watch as a fan.

But he’ll also spend a couple of months looking like a bonafide MVP-caliber player. We’re witnessing one of those stretches from him right now - he has a 179 wRC+ and 2.5 fWAR in his last 47 games dating back to June 14th, both of which are top 10 in MLB during that time. So sure, he often takes a circuitous route. But by the end of the year, he always reaches the same destination. And that destination is a remarkably consistent, damn good ballplayer.

Take a look at Riley’s season-by-season numbers since he first broke out in 2021:

(If you are on a mobile device then this table is best viewed in landscape mode.)

He’s pacing a touch behind his WAR, HR, and wRC+ average from the last three years, but there’s still time for him to improve those numbers, especially if he stays on his current hot streak. In terms of what he’s actually able to control as a hitter, however, he’s already right in line with what we’ve come to expect from him. Let’s dive a bit deeper into those xwOBA columns.

On the offensive side, xwOBA is perhaps the most important and all-encompassing of the expected stats - it shows what you would expect a hitter’s offensive output to be based on the things they can control (walks, strikeouts, and quality of contact). xwOBA rewards a good swing that results in a 108 mph warning track lineout where wRC+, batting average, and slugging percentage do not, because xwOBA is an expected stat and 108 mph line drives to the warning track are expected to be extra base hits more often than they’re not. Riley’s had his fair share of misfortune on that front - his wOBA currently sits 22 points below his xwOBA, and he’s tied with Aaron Judge for the 6th most barreled outs out of 260 hitters with at least 100 plate appearances this season.

xwOBA isn’t a perfect science, but the most feared and productive hitters in MLB generally stay near the top of the xwOBA leaderboards, and Riley is no exception. There are only 11 qualified hitters (and only 2 qualified right-handed hitters) with 85th percentile or better xwOBA in each of the past 4 seasons, and they’re all certified boppers:

1. Aaron Judge
2. Shohei Ohtani
3. Yordan Alvarez
4. Juan Soto
5. Freddie Freeman
6. Corey Seager
7. Bryce Harper
8. Rafael Devers
9. Kyle Tucker
10. Kyle Schwarber
11. Austin Riley

All in all, Riley has established himself as a rock-solid, steady-as-they-come star. Not quite MVP level, but only about one step below it. He combines average plate discipline with a ton of raw pop to all fields and an excellent feel for the barrel. Even with his in-season ups and downs, his seasons on the whole have been so consistently great that it’s starting to become routine, and that’s a rare feeling to attach to a guy who is still three years away from turning 30.

Most years it’s easy to gloss over Riley’s excellence amidst the other stars on the team. But in a year that has gone completely wrong in almost every imaginable way, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out how Austin Riley remaining that inconsistently consistent, sometimes frustrating, terrific player has helped to keep the Braves in the October hunt. And with the current losing streak knocking them out of a playoff spot, there’s no doubt that Atlanta will need him to continue playing his best ball down the stretch. And who knows? Maybe someday in the future, Riley will unlock a consistently consistent season and take home an MVP.