Riley's Improvements

Enscheff

Well-known member
Riley's current line is sitting right around where it finished last year:

2019 (297 PAs): .226/.279/.471 = 86 wRC+
2020 (138 PAs): .234/.283/.453 = 90 wRC+

So far, he has played the role of a horrible OBP hitter with enough HR power to carry his offensive profile to production roughly 10% worse than MLB average. Right now, he is (was?) in the midst of a "hot streak", so folks naturally want to talk about how he has "figured things out", or whatever other old baseball cliche people throw around when a hitter has a stretch of good results.

Below is a chart of Riley's rolling 15 day BABIP plotted against his wOBA. Notice these values track almost perfectly, as these values almost always do:

xVBH2GK.jpg


We know BABIP is a largely luck-driven stat, and this chart shows just how correlated ultimate production is to a very luck-driven stat. This is why we can't draw any conclusions whatsoever based on production stats like OPS, wOBA, or wRC+ over the course of a 2 week sample size...and mostly likely not even over a sample size as large as 1-2 months.

I showed how the cause of his issues were mostly "plate discipline related", mainly his inability to make contact on pitches he swings at in the strike zone (Z-Contact%), and his inability to stop himself from swinging at pitches outside the strike zone (O-Swing%). Both were not only bad, they were literally among the the worst values of all MLB hitters. That's when the speculation started: Was it a swing length issue? Could it be fixed? Do players typically improve this significantly? Etc, etc. I never claimed to have those answers, and anyone who says they do is lying, but my guess is he would not be able to improve in those areas enough to become a true impact player, and his ceiling was that of a 2-3 win guy at his prime...a RHH Jake Lamb.

Luckily for us, stats like Z-Contact% and O-Swing% tend to stabilize very quickly, and true talent can be determined with relatively few plate appearances. To illustrate this, here are some charts of these stats for a very volatile hitter during his Braves career (Swanson):

uFYVOAF.jpg


and the model of consistency himself (Freeman):

WzyfGUW.jpg


So no matter how good or bad, inconsistent or consistent, these stats for hitters tend to jigsaw up and down inside a "true talent band" of roughly 20% through their career. Swanson's contact rate appears to be trending down (a topic for another time), but roughly 70%-90%, and Freeman's appears to be a few points higher. Same deal with swinging at bad pitches, again with Freeman slightly higher. The damage they do on that contact is obviously very different, but these are MLB-level plate discipline skills being shown over the course of a many hundreds of PAs.

Then we move onto Riley's:

lmhYCOc.jpg


We see the known terrible contact skills in 2019 and early 2020 where his 20% band was around 60%-80%. Then we see his contact rate jump to 90% during his insane hot streak, which is a height he never before attained. His O-Swing has improved a small amount, and appears to be steady, and it has gone from worst in MLB to just bad.

But the promising part is the contact rate. We see a low point in the middle of 2020 that was 70%, and a high point that was 90%. Did Riley just step up into that 70%-90% true talent band for contact rate? If so, he is going to be that low-OBP guy with a high power bat at the 6-7 spot in the lineup. If so, the Braves don't really need a 3b this off season. This potential for improvement is why Riley plays over Camargo no matter what for the rest of this season, in my opinion.
 
Last edited:
2016-2017 Jake Lamb production from Riley while he is cheap would be ideal.

agree.
Thanks for the work Enscheff. Looks good.

I don't think we'll have any money to spend, so it would be really amazing if cost controlled Riley was a good player.

If I could sign up for a 2.5 WAR per year from Riley until his FA year, I'd take that in a heart beat.

I think his D is underrated by the metrics. I hope over larger samples that improves.
 
Back
Top