ATLANTA — The last time a Braves hitter had as many as 10 homers and a .400 batting average in a single month was also the only time, and Chipper Jones’ prolific July 1999 performance was a springboard to his winning the National League MVP award.
Now another Braves third baseman, Austin Riley, is on the cusp of matching or even surpassing Jones’ stunning one-month output, and he also happens to be doing it in July.
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Riley had a home run and two run-scoring doubles in Friday’s 5-2 win against the Arizona Diamondbacks, giving him 11 home runs and a .427 batting average this month with two games remaining before August. Jones hit .412 with 11 home runs in July 1999.
And while Riley, 25, is about to match one first-ballot Hall of Famer’s most productive month, he’s also on pace to break a franchise record held by the greatest Braves hitter ever: Riley leads the majors with 59 extra-base hits and is on pace for 93, which would break icon Hank Aaron’s franchise record of 92 set in 1959.
“We’re watching a superstar,” said Braves pitcher Kyle Wright, who pitched 6 2/3 innings of five-hit, two-run ball for his NL-leading 13thwin in 17 decisions. “Anytime he steps in the box you’re just wondering how far he’s going to hit it, how hard is he going to hit it.
“Man, he’s just locked in. I’m glad he’s on our team.”
Riley is hitting .299 with 29 doubles, 29 home runs and 67 RBIs in 99 games. He ranks second in the NL and fourth in the majors in homers and slugging percentage (.603) and sixth in the majors with a .963 OPS, trailing only St. Louis’ Paul Goldschmidt (1.030) among NL hitters.
“Just knowing that the work I’m putting in before games, the homework on the pitchers and stuff, is coming together and actually seeing results out on the field is really nice,” Riley said.
Think about this: Aaron holds the major-league career record for extra-base hits with 1,477, and Riley is on pace to have more extra-base hits in a single season than Aaron did, albeit in a 162-game season compared to 154 in Aaron’s heyday.
Riley is also one hit shy of matching Aaron’s franchise record for extra-base hits in any calendar month — 25 in July 1961.
“Just try to keep my head down and keep working,” Riley said when asked about approaching Aaron’s single-month record. “If that time comes, I’ll take a step back and realize it because Hank Aaron is one of the greats. I’m just trying to put one foot forward each day at a time.”
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All three of Riley’s extra-base hits Saturday came against veteran Madison Bumgarner, who said he had been able to handle Riley in the past but couldn’t find a way to slow him Saturday. Riley’s line-drive first-inning homer on a two-out, full-count pitch had a 19-degree launch angle, his lowest angle of the season, and an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
.@austinriley1308 gets us started early! 💪#ForTheA pic.twitter.com/2DVOTEBeRY
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) July 29, 2022
“You can’t throw him a strike,” Wright said. “I feel like anything you throw in there, he’s doing damage. He’s not just getting hits, he’s doing damage — even more impressive. He’s been so impressive with his at-bats. He’s playing great defense. He really is just doing it all.”
Riley’s third-inning double off the left-field wall left his bat at 113.3 mph, the hardest-hit ball of the game for either team. If he’s not hitting balls over the wall, as Braves manager Brian Snitker put it, he’s trying to hit them through it.
“It’s just another day for him, too,” Snitker said. “He comes, prepares and just does what he does right now. It’s pretty special.”
Riley has seven extra-base hits more this month than the majors’ next-highest total, 17 by the Yankees’ Aaron Judge. It was Riley’s 12th game with multiple extra-base hits this season, second most in the majors behind Cleveland slugger José Ramírez’s 13.
Riley also has 24 RBIs in 24 games this month, four more RBIs than Jones had in 26 games in July 1999. Jones followed up his epic July with similar run production in August and September, totaling 10 homers and 23 RBIs in each of those final months of the season in the heat of a playoff race.
Jones spearheaded an offense that helped the ’99 Braves, locked in a tight race with the New York Mets throughout the second half, finally start to pull away with a three-game sweep of the Mets on Sept. 21-23, with Jones hitting four homers in three games, including a go-ahead homer in each of the three games.
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That sweep gave the Braves a four-game lead over the Mets with nine games to go and probably assured Jones of winning MVP. One week later, after the Braves won two of three against the Mets in New York, Jones uttered a sentence almost as memorable — at least to Braves and Mets fans — as his galvanizing performance had been.
Heckled as he walked off the field by a fan who said the Yankees would take care of the Braves in the World Series, Jones later said to reporters: “Now all the Mets fans can go home and put their Yankees stuff on.”
Legendary stuff.
Now comes Riley, the Mississippi native of whom Jones once said to reporters, after the then-Braves special assistant went to watch then-minor leaguer Riley on a back field one morning at spring training: “That Riley kid has light-tower power.”
While Riley’s first 20 major-league games as a rookie in 2019 were epic — he hit .329 with nine homers, 26 RBIs and a 1.065 OPS — his performance the rest of that season was strikeout- and injury-plagued.
It wasn’t until mid-April 2021 when Riley really began to distinguish himself as an all-around superb hitter, doing it with big power but also with a high average and OBP. He cut down drastically his chase rate and learned to recognize and lay off down-and-away sliders and other pitches that look like strikes but become balls before they reach the plate.
“It’s been a process,” Riley said. “I feel like I’ve slowly gotten to the point where I think the biggest thing that’s helped me with that is watching video, understanding where pitches have to start for it to be (at the last moment) a strike at the corner.”
After hitting .182 with no extra-base hits and .456 OPS in his first 15 games last season, Riley hit .361 with eight doubles, 10 homers and a 1.138 OPS in his next 35 games through May 29, 2021. That was followed by one more 3 1/2-week slump through June 22 last season. But that’s it. The last significant skid he’s had.
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Since then, Riley has learned to reduce rough patches and extend his torrid stretches, so much so that he’s become one of the NL’s best. Beginning June 23, 2021, in 204 regular-season and postseason games for the World Series champions, Riley has hit .308 with 57 doubles, two triples, 52 homers, 149 RBIs and a .941 OPS.
“He’s just become a really, really good hitter,” Snitker said. “It’s pretty cool for all of us who’ve seen him from the get-go to where he is right now, in the development, the growth, maturity, confidence — just what he’s doing is something pretty special. He hits all the pitches, too. His approach, the whole thing is just really special.”
Asked if he’d ever seen a hitter improve so extensively in such a short period of time, Snitker thought for a moment.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “Man, he really has, I’ll tell you that. You know, Dansby (Swanson) is right there in his back pocket (in that regard), with where he’s at right now, too. But yeah, I don’t know, being here in the major leagues, I think it’s probably as good a case as I’ve ever seen.”
Wright, who played with Riley in the minor leagues, was told about Snitker’s comment regarding Riley’s rapid improvement.
“We can go back to ’19, where he had all the struggles with the off-speed pitches,” Wright said. “Now he’s spitting on (taking) them and he’s doing damage against them. Yeah, he’s grown so quick. I feel like his defense when I played with him was always pretty good, but now it’s elite. It’s incredible how quickly he’s grown and how quickly he’s turned into a superstar.”
(Photo of Austin Riley on his way to second base for a third-inning double against the Diamondbacks: Dale Zanine / USA Today)
David O'Brien is a senior writer covering the Atlanta Braves for The Athletic. He previously covered the Braves for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and covered the Marlins for eight seasons, including the 1997 World Series championship. He is a two-time winner of the NSMA Georgia Sportswriter of the Year award. Follow David on Twitter @DOBrienATL
