Austin Riley's Resurgence Is The Key to Atlanta's Lineup in 2026
While Matt Olson has continued to be one of the team's best hitters, Riley can't seem to replicate his early career peak
(This is part two of our 2025 recap/2026 preview as the team enters free agency. You can view the first article in the series, looking at Atlanta’s catchers, here.)
The 2025 season diverged in two directions for the corner infield stalwarts of the Atlanta Braves.
First baseman Matt Olson continued his ironman streak, starting all 162 games for the fourth consecutive season while hitting .272/.366/.484 with 29 homers and 95 RBI. He led all Braves in fWAR with 4.7, easily outpacing veteran starter Chris Sale (3.6 fWAR) by over a full win. He’s widely expected to be the National League’s Gold Glove winner at first base after finishing with +17 Defensive Runs Saved (a top-ten mark) and +9 Outs Above Average (T-24th).
Austin Riley, however, had another disappointing campaign from the standards he set from 2021-2023, where he hit a collective .286/.354/.525 with an average of 36 home runs and 100 RBI per season. He also failed to break 110 games played for the second consecutive season, with a core muscle injury ending his season in early August.
Let’s talk about it.
Third base could raise the ceiling of the lineup
Similar to catcher, the Braves used five players at third base, but two of them got the bulk of the action. The position’s final stats came out to .252/.304/.394 with 18 homers and 71 RBI, but unlike catcher, this statistical distribution likely isn’t as broad as you’re expecting it to be.
Austin Riley: 102G, .260/.309/.428, 16 HR, 54 RBI
Nacho Alvarez Jr: 57G, .234/.293/.330, 2 HR, 15 RBI
Vidal Bruján: 4G, 4-9, 2 R, 2 RBI
Luke Williams: 4G, 0-8
Jonathan Ornelas: 1G, 1-3
That group was collectively worth 2.1 fWAR, tied for 15th in all of baseball.
Riley started every game when he was on the roster, but that wasn’t the entire season. He missed eight games around the All-Star Break for the initial core muscle injury he suffered, and then had season-ending surgery after a recurrence of the injury at the Speedway Classic. Alvarez, who missed the beginning of the season with a wrist injury, became the primary starter at third base minus the occasional off day down the stretch.
What they did well:
Riley hit .311 with runners in scoring position this season, just barely behind catcher Drake Baldwin’s .319 average for the best mark on the team and 26th best in baseball among qualifiers.
Alvarez’s +2 Outs Above Average was 12th best in all of baseball despite playing less than 60 games.
Where they struggled
Atlanta’s third basemen had a collective -1 Outs Above Average, good for 15th in baseball. Surprisingly/unfortunately, Riley’s defense was the problem here - he finished at -1, with Alvarez’s +1 offsetting him and the rest accounting for -1 OAA.
Getting on base. Riley’s .309 on-base was 26th in baseball among third basemen this year, while Alvarez and his .296 OBP were tied for 34th at the position.
Outlook for 2026
I feel confident in saying that there’s nothing that would do more to raise the ceiling of the Braves lineup than Austin Riley rediscovering his previous form, one that Atlanta rewarded with a team-record ten-year, $212M extension that locked him up through his age 36 season (if the club option is exercised).
I gave the stats earlier, but looking at his previous five seasons shows a clear delineation between who he was and who he has been recently.
2021-2023: 478G (159G/season), 18.8 bWAR, .286/.354/.525 w/ 108 HR, 297 RBI
2024-2025: 212G (106G/season), 4.2 bWAR, .258/.316/.445 w/ 35 HR, 110 RBI
Conspiracy theorists like to point out that Riley struggled after he got his extension, but not so fast my friend: He signed that in August of 2022 and then proceeded to hit .281/.345/.516 with 37 homers in that marvelous 2023, winning the NL Silver Slugger and logging his third consecutive 7th place (or better) MVP finish.
It’s not the birth of his first kid, as that was April of 2022. In addition, his home and road splits in 2022 were even better than his career numbers, so it wasn’t some sort of fatigue/lack of sleep with a newborn at home.
Several have looked at the loss of Riley’s private hitting coach Mike Brumley, who tragically passed away in June of 2024. While the loss of a long-time coach, one that worked for the Braves during Riley’s formative minor league years, can subtract a resource the player could use to get out of a slump, I don’t think it’s that, either. His first-half and second-half numbers in 2024 are within three points of batting average of each other and have the exact same OPS+.
I really do think it’s slumps, combined with injuries, that have colored our perception of him. For his career, Riley is traditionally a summer performer - his .284 average in July is the highest of any months for his career, while his July career OPS mark of .927 is more than 100 points better than his career average. His .859 OPS in August is traditionally the second-best mark of his season, too, and it’s backed by a .286 average.
But Riley started hot this year, hitting a combined .276 with ten homers through the end of May. While the homer and RBI production was down from where we’d expect him to be, everything else was tracking well - his .336 OBP was right in line with his career .334 mark as he was adjusting to the new Tim Hyers offense.
And then the injuries started, with Riley first reporting abdominal soreness in early June and playing in just 45 games over the summer before going down with season-ending surgery in early August.1 I’m going to be tentatively hopeful that a healthy offseason - the estimated recovery period for a sports hernia is roughly 12 weeks to return to play - means that Riley will enter spring training with no restrictions.
And if he can get back to that MVP vote-receiving form, watch out.
Zero concerns at first base
First base, however, was an Iron Horse position in a league that’s increasingly concerned with load management. Just six players played in all 162 games this season, with Rafael Devers getting a 163rd game due to the timing of his trade from the Boston Red Sox to the San Francisco Giants.
Matt Olson, once again, was one of those six. The last time he missed a regular-season game was May 1st, 2021, while playing for the Oakland Athletics - Seth Brown got the start at first base and Mitch Moreland served as the designated hitter, part of a three-game ‘break’ for Olson.
Because of that Ironman streak, Olson took all but three of Atlanta’s first base at-bats this season, with Eli White going 0-3 after either checking during a blowout or after Olson’s first career ejection on September 27th.
What Olson did well:
As we mentioned earlier, Olson was the best defender at first base in all of baseball, inspiring me to write an ode to his ability to play a shallow right field back in late May (linked below).
(To update that piece, of the 24 total putouts recorded by first basemen at least 190 feet deep in right field, Matt Olson had a MLB-high five. )
No, seriously, on that defense: Olson’s +9 OAA is the 2nd-highest mark for a Braves first baseman since the creation of Statcast, surpassed only by Freddie Freeman’s +10 in 2016.
Despite being third on the team in at-bats with a runner in scoring position, Olson led the team with 41 hits, was 2nd in RBI with 62, and 2nd in extra-base hits with 16.
Where Olson could have improved:
While Olson led the National League with 41 doubles, his homer total of 29 is the 2nd straight season he’s finished shy of 30. The last two years of Olson's homers just barely beat his MLB-best 54 longballs in the magical 2023 campaign, while now it looks more and more like a juiced ball and/or hacked Pitchcom fluke.
He put up a -3 Run Value on the bases, a 3rd percentile mark in baseball. It doesn’t appear to be decisions, but rather just physical ability - Olson’s sprint speed continues to drop, hitting a career-low 7th percentile mark of 25.2 ft/sec this season. He’s still faster than Sean Murphy (24.8 ft/sec), though, so I’m sure that’ll come up in the clubhouse a bit.
I genuinely don’t have a #3 here.
Outlook for 2026
Olson plays 162 games and continues to be one of the best first basemen in baseball. I don’t have anything deep to add here, although it’ll be really interesting to see what the Braves do if Olson does genuinely need to miss time. Do they move Riley to first and slot Nacho Alvarez in at third? Do they ask Jurickson Profar (72 career appearances at first base) to take over at first base and play Eli White and/or Jake Fraley (or an offseason addition) in left field every day, or try and teach Drake Baldwin some first base to get his bat in the lineup on an everyday basis?
It’s a fascinating decision, one I hope we never need to worry about.
2024 was a similar story, with Riley’s season ending due to a fractured hand on August 18th.
So good to hear from you. 26 will be a pretty darn good year. Looking forward for what it has in store for us all. Be well.
Eli White looked good on his very short stints at 1st base. Don't discard him as a back up first baseman. 😅
But I agree 100%. For this team to be what everyone thought it was and what we think they could be, the key is Austin Riley. With Riley being his best self, with Ronald and Profar success getting on base, and Olson back at his spot as a cleanup hitter, that where this line up gets good.
And if Michael Harris can improve him pitch recognition and be 2nd half Money Mike for most of the season, he can ignite the lower part of the lineup.
You can talk about bringing 1 or 2 new guys every offseason but, if these two long-term signed core Braves don't find success and consistency, these Braves won't make it.