It’s a surprising, unusual development that sustains a franchise mainstay for a long time. The deal buys out the 25-year-old’s final three seasons of arbitration eligibility and extends the club’s control window to eight years. It locks him in Atlanta for nearly all of his prime, as Riley won’t hit free agency until after his age-35 campaign at the earliest. A former first-round supplemental pick, Riley has quickly blossomed into one of the organization’s top prospects. He reached the majors just after his 22nd birthday in 2019. Riley was up and down for the first two seasons of his big league career, particularly when he hit over 36% of his rookie plate appearances. Still, Atlanta stuck with him despite the early inconsistency, and they’ve been rewarded since Riley broke out last year. Riley appeared in 160 games last season, hitting 33 home runs with a .303/.367/.531 line. That marks a career high in longballs to date, but that mark won’t remain his personal best for much longer. He’s already connected on 29 homers in 436 plate appearances this season and is hitting .301/.360/.604 overall. Riley’s pure vertical line hasn’t changed much from 2021 to ’22, but his slight improvement in finishing results comes at a time when offense across the league has plummeted this year. As measured by wRC+, Riley’s offensive output has jumped from an already excellent 35 points above average to an impressive 63 points above average. Among qualifiers, only Yordan Álvarez, Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, Rafael Devers and Mike Trout have a better wRC+ this season than Riley. This is bolstered by the batted ball counts from placing Riley among the game’s elite bats. His average exit velocity of 93.7 MPH is over five MPH above the league average. His 55.9% hard contact percentage is also among the best in the league, as is his 17.6% barrel rate. Simply put, few hitters hit the ball as hard as Riley often does. Of course, Riley’s power was never in doubt. His problem earlier in his career was making frequent contact, but the Mississippi native has made incredible strides in that regard. After making contact on just 63% of his swings as a rookie, Riley has gotten the bat on the ball about 73% of the time in each of the last three seasons. That’s not great, but it’s more than enough for a player with his power output. Riley still has an aggressive approach and gets out of the strike zone quite a bit, but his excellent batted-ball results make up for what can always be a slightly below-average walk rate. Heading back into early 2021, Riley has a .302/.364/.560 slash line in just under 1100 plate appearances. He looks like a bona fide slugger, and the Braves are certainly happy to lock him up in the middle of the lineup for the next decade. Riley won a Silver Slugger Award and finished seventh in NL MVP voting last year and earned his first of what the club envisions will be several All-Stars this season. The Braves are now committed to 75% of their infield long term. Atlanta signed Matt Olson to an eight-year, $168 million deal within days of acquiring him from the Athletics in Spring Training. They previously had Ozzie Albies under contract through 2025 (with club options for 2026 and ’27). That leaves Dansby Swanson as the lone member of the Atlanta infield without a contract for the foreseeable future, as the shortstop is set to hit free agency at the end of this year. Atlanta also has Ronald Acuña Jr. under contract. for the better part of a decade, giving them a corps of young position players to build around. According to an estimate by Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez, the club’s 2023 payroll jumps to about $113 million for next season (not including salaries for arbitration-eligible players). It’s about $87 million for 2024 and between $60 million and $70 million for the next two years. Atlanta’s 2022 payroll, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, is a franchise record $177.7MM. That will leave them some flexibility to re-sign or replace Swanson, particularly since key contributors like Michael Harris II, Kyle Wright, Spencer Strider and Ian Anderson won’t hit arbitration until at least 2024. It’s a strong long-term position for president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos and his staff as they try to build on last year’s World Series title and create a long-term juggernaut. More to come.
