During the Atlanta Braves' recent three-game losing streak, several factors have contributed to the Braves’ woes. The pitching staff came up short over the last couple of nights, including a rare off-night for Chris Sale on Monday, and the offense has scored more than two runs just once in their last four games. Every team goes through rough stretches where things don't line up, but Austin Riley's early 2026 performance is still cause for concern.
Riley was on a trajectory to be one of the best third basemen in baseball. From 2021 to 2023, Riley averaged a .286/.354/.525 line and 36 homers a season. He would certainly have off-nights as every player does, but he was clearly on the rise, and Atlanta agreed, which is exactly why the team decided to give him a lucrative extension.
However, things started to unravel in 2024. Riley got off to a rough start that season, and then a series of injuries resulted in him looking like a shadow of his former self. If the Braves want to get back on track this season, they need Riley to figure out what appears to be a wide-reaching problem.
Austin Riley's struggles are both familiar and somewhat surprising
Having missed as much time as Riley did after needing hernia surgery in 2025, a bit of rust was to be expected. Getting one's timing back after a long lay-off is always tough, and while spring training helps, it is hard to compare that to the pace and level of competition in the actual regular season. In some respects, Riley's starting slowly should be the expectation.
However, the issue isn't that Riley is off to a slow start, as this is just an 11-game sample; it is how he has gotten off to this start. Anyone who watched early in Riley's career knows that breaking pitches ate him alive. From 2021-2023, it seemed like Riley had fixed that problem, but his difficulties against the curvy stuff have returned over the last couple of years, including in 2026 so far. Other than Riley's bat speed (which grades as elite in 2026), every single other hitting metric from swing decisions (whiff %, chase %) to quality of contact (average exit velocity, barrel %, hard hit %) has all been below average or much worse.
When a guy is scuffling in almost every way, it is hard to point to one problem to fix. It is easy to blame a guy's swing, but that same swing has Riley putting up elite bat speed numbers, which you would like to keep. What the Braves don't want is to realize that all of Riley's injuries have robbed him of the explosiveness and timing that got him to where he was, without a clear path to getting those gifts back. If that is the case, this could be a long season.