Rookie Austin Riley launches Braves career with authority

ATLANTA — About all that separates Austin Riley from the beefy sluggers of baseball’s yore are the names.

If he’d been born three decades earlier, his first name would’ve been Phil or Gordon or Dave. He’d be pounding balls out of concrete rings like Riverfront Stadium or Three Rivers Stadium instead of baseball estates with names like SunTrust Park and Oracle Park. Oh, and he’d probably have a handlebar mustache too.

But outside of that, Riley’s a genuine old-school throwback, a 6-foot-3, 240-pound hulk who combines crowd-charging power with practiced humility, a guy who arrived in the major leagues with a perfect origin story — he nearly missed his call to The Show! — and proceeded to just wreck the joint.

“We’d all been hearing about him in the minors, and we were looking forward to seeing what he was going to do when he got here,” said Freddie Freeman. “He’s been a big jolt to our lineup.”

Heading into Thursday, Riley had clubbed nine home runs and plated 26 RBIs with an OPS of 1.069 through 19 games. He won the National League Rookie of the Month playing just 15 games, and no player in baseball history with the exception of Rhys Hoskins in 2017 has begun a career at quite the same homer pace.

If all this sounds a bit familiar to Braves fans, it should; back in 2005, another rocket-out-of-the-gate rookie by the name of Jeff Francoeur ignited the Braves’ fanbase and helped lead the team to a playoff berth. Through his 19th game, Francoeur had seven homers and 19 RBIs, with an OPS of 1.244. Eleven games later, he was on the cover of “Sports Illustrated” with the tagline “The Natural.”

This would be the point where the narrator would say, “That might have been an overstatement.” Francoeur wasn’t a bust, by any means; he played for 12 years in the majors. But the Braves traded him to the New York Mets four years later, and he never quite lived up to that Roy Hobbs-ian moniker. You have to wonder if the pressure of being too much too soon had an impact on his growth.

Francoeur had one exceedingly bad habit — he would swing at anything, up to and including the catcher’s throw back to the pitcher — and Riley has some of the same tendencies, already racking up 25 strikeouts. And once pitchers start to key in on his quirks, those homers won’t be coming around as often.

“In the major leagues, they find the things you don’t do well, and zero in on those,” Freeman said. “He’s already fixed part of his swing, where he couldn’t handle sliders down and in from right-handers. He’s going to figure it out fine.”

“It’s a game of failure,” Riley said, not exactly sounding like a 22-year-old. “I’ve been doing it my whole career. When things aren’t going well, you eliminate the lowest of the lows and keep that rollercoaster at an even plane.”

We’re still in the myth-building stage of the Austin Riley story, but here’s what we know: he grew up a baseball player in north Mississippi, playing catch and tee-ball with his dad. He made the varsity squad of DeSoto Central High School as a freshman. His bat and his arm took the team to the state finals his junior year, and a state championship his senior year.

“So many players are great athletes, but only a few have the ability to perform at the highest level when the spotlight is the brightest,” said Mark Monaghan, Riley’s coach at DeSoto Central. “Austin had multiple walk-off and go-ahead homers throughout the playoffs. He’s got the ability to slow the game down.”

Riley committed early to play for Mississippi State out of high school, but nobody really believed he was going there; the Braves selected him with the 41st overall selection in the 2015 MLB draft, offered him a $1.6 million contract, and that was that.

What’s most compelling about Riley’s early story is that while a dozen teams wanted him as a pitcher, he held firm on playing the field. It was quite the gamble to take with his career, but it’s obviously paid off.

“It was pretty easy for me [to make that choice],” Riley says. “I did not like pitching. I was blessed to be able to do well at it, but I wasn’t a fan of it.” Right before the draft, he pulled his name out of consideration as a pitcher, and that left teams with one option: pick him as a position player, or watch him go to Mississippi State. The Braves decided not to let him go so easily.

Riley began raking his way through the Braves’ minor-league system, drawing notice up and down the organization. He began May 2019 on an astounding run, homering in 10 of 50 at-bats for Triple-A Gwinnett. So when Braves outfielder Ender Inciarte went onto the injured list with a lumbar strain, the call to Riley was obvious … even if it didn’t exactly go smoothly.

Riley was in a Buffalo hotel room chilling after an 11-3 victory over the Bison — a game where Riley had hit a grand slam, no big deal — when pitcher Kolby Allard’s phone rang. It was manager Damon Berryhill.

“Where’s Austin?” Berryhill said.

“He’s right here,” Allard replied, and a smile crept across his face. He handed the phone over to Riley.

Berryhill delivered the words every minor leaguer longs to hear, and ended with, “Next time I call, you better answer your phone.”

Turned out that Riley had gotten a new cell phone, and Berryhill didn’t have his number. But with that new phone, Riley dialed his parents and wife — “You better not be lying to me,” his father said — and with that, he was off to the majors.

A few hours later, and Riley was in Atlanta, preparing to face St. Louis and wearing No. 27 for the Braves.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking,” Riley says. “I wasn’t nervous going out into left field to start the game, but as soon as I stood in the box, I started to feel the shakes and the jitters, to amp up a bit.”

Four innings into his major-league career, and Riley dug in against Cardinals pitcher Michael Wacha. Riley turned on a 1-2 fastball and sent it an estimated 438 feet into the far distance, helping the Braves beat the Cardinals, 4-0.

The legend of Austin Riley was born, complete with new t-shirt to commemorate the occasion:

“I knew this was going to happen,” Monaghan said, “but I didn’t ever expect it to happen so early.”

The Braves have posted Riley in left field for now; he’d been practicing in the outfield since spring training for this kind of moment, and he’s still doing flyball-catch-and-relay-throw drills before games. He can also spell Freeman at first or Josh Donaldson at third. And he creates one of those “nice problems to have” for the Braves — what do you do with Inciarte, a former All-Star and a three-time Gold Glove winner, once he returns? But that’s a question for later.

In person, Riley barely speaks above a whisper. He’s keeping his head low, trying to fit in, which is probably the wisest move for a guy who’s gone from cramped clubhouses with dirty floors and box dinners to a carpeted, leather-recliner palace with a pool table and full catering. He’s a golfer — he claims scores in the 70s — but hasn’t yet played a round with Braves golfing legends like Tom Glavine. You get the impression he’s not going to be the one to ask.

“I’m just trying to be a fly on the wall and do my part,” he says. “I want to be that guy they can rely on, and I feel like I’ve been that guy. Hopefully I can continue to do that.”

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.

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