I get it. You're excited.
And why shouldn't you be? You took a chance on Austin Riley when the Braves first called him up — or maybe even before then — and your faith has been richly rewarded, with him more or less carrying your team for the past three weeks.
Now to make sure it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Seems straightforward enough, right? Secure your assets and count your blessings? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth? Stick with him, and you'll never go hungry again?
Oh, pitiful child, so new to the ways of this world. The dopamine rush has polluted your brain, making it so you don't notice the cracks forming beneath the surface — or refuse to acknowledge them when they're pointed out to you.
It's how, at the height of Riley hysteria, you can't see the upside in anything else.
It's strange the delusion that develops in otherwise rational-minded people when they find themselves in possession of the Next Big Thing. "He's mine now. You didn't see what I saw in him, so you just have to sit there with your regret. No do-overs. I got it right. You got it wrong, so don't play me for the fool now."
Hear me out, Riley owners. Danger lurks in the ratios, namely one: the strikeouts. There are bad strikeout rates, and then there's the 35.2% mark he has contributed so far. Among qualifying batters last year, only Chris Davis and Joey Gallo had worse. The highest batting average between them: .206.
Take it easy now. No funny business. I'm not suggesting Riley is confined to being a .200 hitter himself. What I am suggesting is that when his home run pace inevitably slows — and he'd have to be the greatest in history to continue hitting one every other game — he'll be in for some real challenges.
But what about Gallo this year? While it's true he has managed to put together a .276 batting average even with a similar strikeout rate to Riley, he's had to be an outlier on so many different levels to pull it off. He leads all of baseball in hard-hit rate, according to FanGraphs, ranks sixth in line-drive rate and is a distant first in home run-to-fly ball rate. How distant? Well, his 27.6% mark last year ranked third among qualifying batters. This year's is 43.6%.
So even knowing the freak Gallo is and the likelihood he's one of if not the best in baseball in those several categories, he's still had to play well over his head just to hit .276. If he ends up hitting between .240 and .250, it's still the sort of triumph that's only possible because he's so impossibly good on those fleeting occasions when he does put bat on ball.
And that's Gallo, for goodness' sake, the standard for power hitting in the game today. Maybe Riley is something close to that level of freakish, but less than 20 games into his career, is it a halfway reasonable assumption? Of course not.
What saves Riley and gives me hope he'll ultimately still be a Fantasy asset is that the strikeout rate itself, awful as it is, may also be a product of sample size. Don't get me wrong: Strikeouts were an issue for much of his minor-league career, so in that way, what he's doing now makes sense. But he made a big leap at Triple-A this year with a 19.1% rate that would be a disgrace to no one. Unlike the case of Gallo, whose strikeout situation we've long known to be hopeless, there's room for improvement here.
Granted, it won't settle at 19%, but it wouldn't take much of a correction for Riley to get it down below 30%, which is still bad but less of outlier among the game's top sluggers. In fact, it'd put him in the same range as Pete Alonso, who I think makes for a reasonable comparison. Both earned 70 power grades from Baseball America prior to the year, making their home run prowess predictable. Alonso got off to a similarly outrageous start before leveling off, but he seems now to have settled in at a comfortable .260 batting average.
Of course, even that's only as sustainable as his 50-homer pace, which may be a lot to ask for anyone, 70 power grade or otherwise. But it's at least within the realm of possibility and, given how much longer he's been at it, certainly more palpable than Riley doing the same.
But there's the upside. It's what Riley could possibly be if things break right for him going forward. It follows, then, that any offer you receive for Riley shouldn't be better than what you'd expect to get for Alonso, and if it is, well then the other guy is the one drowning in dopamine. Or maybe regret? Whatever it is, he's responding irrationally to a terrific 17-game stretch and willing to pay for what you've already received.
You'd be winning twice over with such a deal, in other words, having not only benefited from what's likely Riley's most productive stretch of the season but also having sold him at a price tag most representative of his upside.
Look, maybe your league is savvier than I give it credit for and will only make reasonable offers for Riley, in which case clinging to the upside isn't a bad move. He's definitively must-own and could reasonably be called must-start, at least right now. But you have to do your due diligence. He's not Babe Ruth incarnate. He's not even Kris Bryant incarnate. He may not even be Eugenio Suarez incarnate, and so hearing out offers makes sense.
Let's look at some real-world examples, provided to us by some of my Twitter followers:
Giving up Josh Bell obviously hurts, but getting back two ace-caliber pitchers — granted, maligned ones, but not in a way that raises real concerns — makes it well worth it. Even if we reduce this deal to just a straight-up swap of Riley for Ramirez, I think you come out ahead. As puzzling as Ramirez's season has been, he's still the higher-upside bat of the two.
Probably for the best since I'd still prefer Manny Machado to Corey Seager, but I've got to tell you, just looking at the batted-ball profiles, I think Shohei Ohtani might be the higher-impact player than Riley going forward. The ability to steal bases obviously helps.
This is exactly the sort of stupidity that inspires such a column.
Would the other guy have followed through on this deal if he knew Lucas Giolito had another gem in store Sunday? I can't help but wonder. You'd rather have the pitcher, especially since Giolito's emergence is the more believable of the two.
The added wrinkle here is the same for every deal involving Chris Paddack. His season may already be halfway done because of what figures to be a pretty restrictive innings limit. For however long it lasts, though, I'd rather have the more certain impact at the scarcer position, which is to say you should make the deal.
And here's why I'm consistently taking the side of the deal that includes the impact pitcher. They're just so much harder to find in these days of big offense. It's almost like trade bait is wasted on anything else, so I commend you for trying, sir.
In the immortal words of Senator Palpatine, "do it!"
Oh yeah. Even without the third base redundancies, here's another chance to score a big arm with Riley. That Brandon Woodruff struggled last time out makes the deal more feasible, too, but if you haven't heard yet, he's legit.
Yes, yes!
*Falls out of chair*
Actually, Michael Chavis is a perfect example for how quickly our impression of a player can change. He was Riley about a month ago, and now? Frankly, I'd rather have Riley. Both players' production is tied almost entirely to their home runs, but Riley's ceiling is a little higher.
Closer trades are especially difficult to size up because so much of their value is tied to scarcity, which can vary greatly from format to format. Hector Neris isn't a particularly high-end choice, though, so I think I'd rather take my chances on the impact bat.
You know who has a strikeout rate about as bad as Riley's? Brandon Lowe, who has done it over a much longer period of time. That's more damning, of course, but he has also survived it for much longer. Still, regression should hit hard, and without as much hope for a skills change. Second base is a tougher position to fill, granted, but you were probably better off sticking with Riley.
I agree with him for turning you down. I agree with him for countering high. I agree with you for knowing better.
Eh ... you'll probably live to regret this one, seeing as it's a categories league. But I tell you, if Lorenzo Cain doesn't start running more, which is no guarantee at 33 years old, BABIP correction alone won't be enough to redeem his value.