Atlanta Braves: Is Austin Riley still the third baseman of the future?

With all of the offseason talk surrounding the Atlanta Braves acquiring a third baseman, what does that mean for the future of Austin Riley?

There has been so much focus this offsesaon on the Atlanta Braves re-signing Josh Donaldson that almost no one has even considered the fact we may already have our third baseman of the future.

I mean, wasn’t the thought process coming into 2019 that Austin Riley was the future at third base? And wasn’t that still the thought after he made his debut and set the league on fire?

Are we really giving up on this 22-year-old kid after one bad (really bad) month in the big leagues?

I’ll be the first to admit that I was never that high on Riley and would have traded him to the Miami Marlins for J.T. Realmuto if that’s what they wanted.

But even I can’t believe how quickly Riley has fallen out of favor with fans, and seemingly the front office.

This is a guy that hit .283/.348 with 86 home runs in 1,788 Minor League at-bats and then hit .262 with 16 home runs in his first 183 Major League at-bats.

Yes, I know that he was awful after that first month-and-a-half and couldn’t hit a slider to save his life.

But the kid is still just 22 years old and has time to adjust.

Maybe he does still need another year in Triple-A to make some adjustments before we can trust him at the big league level again, but I certainly wouldn’t give up on this guy.

It’s interesting to note from FanGraphs that he hit the ball to centerfield 40 percent of the time with the Braves. That’s well above his percentage in the minors where he was a pull hitter nearly 50 percent of the time.

Maybe that had to do with poor timing against higher velocity pitching. That’s certainly something that can be fixed.

Either way, we all know nothing will change until he learns to either layoff or hit the slider, which has become the most common and effective secondary pitch for almost every pitcher in baseball.

If he can do that and get his strikeout percent back into the mid-twenties, which is where it was in the minors, and not the 36.4 percent he had in 2019, then he’ll be OK.

Again, timing and learning to recognize and layoff a slider are things that can be worked on. The natural talent and ability to hit a baseball hard is still there.

It seems like a lot of Braves fans, including myself at times, are ready to trade him away. In almost every trade scenario Braves fans send us they include Riley in the deal.

And if the Braves were to sign Donaldson to a four-year deal, then I get it — Riley would be blocked.

Not only would he blocked at third, but with Cristian Pache and Drew Waters knocking on the door, he’d be blocked in the outfield as well.

Perhaps that’s why the Braves are holding strong on not going longer than three years on Donaldson. Maybe they still feel like Riley is the third baseman of the future. Let us know your thoughts on what they should do with Riley in the comments below.