Through the first six games of the 2025 season, Atlanta Braves third baseman Austin Riley was slashing just .091/.167/.273 and looked completely lost at the plate. Not one to mince words, even Riley himself called his performance "embarrassing", but maintained that things were going to turn around for himself and the team. So far, that prediction is looking spot on and even more good news could be coming soon.
The Braves have since turned things around since their dreadful 0-7 start and it isn't a coincidence that that has coincided with Riley going off. Since April 2, Riley has posted a .330/.369/.557 line with seven homers and 23 RBI. While he needs to draw some more walks, everything else about Riley's game has been turned up to 11 including his performance on Sunday where he hit a pair of homers in the Braves' 4-3 win.
What is crazy is that when you take a deeper look at the months where Riley typically performs the best, we could actually see an even crazier stretch from him in the month of May.
If Austin Riley's reputation as a slow starter is true, the rest of the league needs to watch out in May
Riley has a well-earned reputation as a guy that takes a little while to get going and that goes back to his time in the minor leagues. In his first full season at Rome, Riley's numbers were fairly pedestrian in the first half before he went absolutely wild in the second half. Before he got called up to the majors, he took a while to find his timing at Gwinnett that season. In 132 games in his career, his line for the month of April (including this year where he has played very well) is .263/.343/.452 which isn't bad, but not great when compared to his career norms.
However, the month of May has historically been one Riley's better months and his two-homer day may be just the beginning. In 114 May games (483 plate appearances), Riley is slashing .283/.342/.524 and averages a homer every four games or so. While this shouldn't be taken as gospel, there is at least some merit to thinking that Riley could perform even better than he is right now if trends hold.
Asking a guy to perform better than what Riley is doing right now is a big ask unless your name is Aaron Judge apparently. Even if Riley just maintains what he is doing right now, he is going to be in the NL MVP conversation by the end of the month. One does wonder, though, if the best is yet to come out of Riley this year. If more is coming, he is going to be a lot of fun to watch.