How the Braves and Austin Riley determined what caused his slow start

Riley was 4-for-12 with a double, a walk and two RBIs in Los Angeles. It was a glimmer of hope for the 29-year-old third baseman who hit .190 with 33 strikeouts in the season’s first 32 games.

When the Braves returned home to face the Cubs at Truist Park, Riley collected three more hits and belted his first home run in eight games. He capped the home stand with a three-run homer against the Red Sox on Sunday, a blast that was an early momentum-shifter in an 8-1 win.

“The biggest thing here recently is (Braves assistant GM) Adam (Sonabend) and the front office guys and (Hyers) looking at some stuff,” Riley said Sunday. “The front hip and front shoulder were kind of dropping down a little bit in my load, and that was causing a little bit of a push, or kind of flare where you see some of those fly balls. So just kind of getting square with my body and moving that squareness forward, allowing me to just stay through balls and get on plane earlier.”

In the Marlins’ visitors’ clubhouse this week Riley demonstrated how his left shoulder would tend to drop before the opposing pitcher even released a pitch. That would cause Riley’s left hip to move back and down as well. The movement then causes an overcorrection where Riley tries to quickly lift his shoulder back up.

Foul balls, pop-ups, swings and misses, connecting late on fastballs, rolling over pitches for easy ground-ball outs became the frequent result. The expectation is those results will change for the better when — and if — Riley can keep from dropping the front shoulder consistently.

“We’ve been digging, and kind of organically just talking, it narrowed to that,” Hyers said. “It’s been going on just a little while, and he was just frustrated. ‘Why am I rolling up? I see it. I should have killed that. Why am I mishitting some balls?’ And so just kind of went back and compared some stuff in ’23 and ’22.

“I preach to him all the time, ‘Don’t load with your shoulder going forward. Pick your hip up to your shoulder, not take your shoulder down.’”

The mechanical correction, of course, isn’t easy. And avoiding the habit daily is the challenge moving forward.

Before Riley’s 2-for-4 day with a double and a home run Sunday against the Red Sox, he had gone 1-for-8 in that series. The first two games this week in Miami resulted in even tougher outcomes; he was 0-for-4 in both.

On Tuesday, Riley came up with one out and the bases loaded in the first inning — and struck out. He came up with one out and runners on first and third in the third — and softly lined out to the pitcher. There were two on and two outs in the fifth when he came up — and he struck out again. With two on and two out in the seventh? Riley … struck out.

Braves manager Walt Weiss moved Riley down to seventh in the order Wednesday and he hit a three-run homer in the second. He finished 1-for-3 with a walk.

It’s unfair to expect Riley, an All-Star in 2022 and 2023, to come through every single plate appearance, even if he might have that expectation for himself.

“It seems like you take a couple steps forward a couple days, and then a step back, and a few steps forward,” Riley said Sunday. “Hopefully we can kind of continue that progression, keep taking steps forward each and every day until I’m where I want to be. I think it’s close.

“I felt like I’ve gone on a couple little hot streaks here, and then it’s kind of back in the same rut. It’s like, ‘How can I get feeling good in the box and take it for a month or to the rest of the season?’ Trying to just build off stuff.”

Ahead of Thursday’s series finale in Miami, Riley is hitting .254 in May. His slugging percentage is up 193 points from the season’s first month, his OPS up 221 points, and the batting average on balls in play is up 65 points.

Riley has hit 13 balls more than 100 mph off the bat since the start of that three-game series against the Dodgers. Half the balls Riley has connected with have been “hard hit,” according to Statcast.

The trends are positive, and not a moment too soon with catcher Drake Baldwin on the injured list with a strained oblique and catcher Sean Murphy out at least two months with a broken finger. And it all comes down to Riley keeping that front shoulder up, then hoping the numbers will follow.

“Each day it got better and better, and he saw the progress of balls being directed, redirected a lot smoother, and a lot better flight and he’s hit some balls in the air,” Hyers said. “The first, probably three or four days, probably fought himself a lot. And then it trickled into some stuff. He’s been really good at it. Just a credit to him of how athletic he is and how he can control his body.”