2 weeks Ago
Atlanta Braves third baseman Austin Riley hit his fifth home run of the season and raised his 2025 batting average to .300 Tuesday night against the Toronto Blue Jays. But it came in another losing effort on the road.
With the defeat, the Braves dropped to 5-12 this season. It's still early, but the MLB rumor mill never stops, and the latest in the mill is Riley could be best serving the Braves as a trade chip rather than their franchise third baseman. At least that's what The Athletic's Brandan Kuty suggested.
"Could the Yankees put together a competitive deal for Sandy Alcantara? Not without including Lombard," Kuty wrote on April 10 . "Who else will for sure be available at that time? Maybe the Yankees could try to cherry-pick from the Atlanta Braves if they continue underperforming. "The Yankees (and many other teams) surely would like the idea of Austin Riley.
" It's most accurate to say Kuty "floated" Riley's name more than anything. There's no report the New York Yankees or any other team is pursuing Riley. Furthermore, stating the Yankees and many other teams would be interested in acquiring the Braves third baseman isn't news.
Riley is a career .272 hitter with an .840 OPS in parts of seven MLB seasons.
He'd be a middle-of-the-order hitter on about 28 or 29 teams in the league. Nevertheless, Kuty's suggestion is catching fire in the aggregation game . A lot of trade hypotheticals that never end up happening still get written about -- there's too much riding on page views in the business to only write about what's absolutely going to happen.
But there should be some realm of possibility in a trade proposal. There's practically none with the Braves and Riley for one main reason -- his contract. Riley signed a 10-year contract in Aug.
2022. There's seven more years left of the deal, which runs through the 2032 season. Then, Riley has a $20 million club option for the 2033 campaign.
In another eight years, $20 million could be chump chain for a player of Riley's caliber, assuming he continues on the same track he's on currently. The purpose of non-contending teams unloading key roster pieces is often to get something in return for players on expiring contracts. That helps teams build toward the future.
Players don't necessarily have to be pending free agents to be trade chips. If a team doesn't see itself competing before a player's contract will expire, whether that be in two or three more years, then that player would be better used on the trade market. But with the long length of Riley's contract, using him as a trade chip would be most unusual.
Do the Braves really see themselves not competing for the next eight years? Teams don't trade All-Star players on affordable, almost decade-long contracts. It would be ludicious to do so. No matter how bad it might get for the Braves this summer, they very, very likely aren't trading Riley.
But I will admit, the only way such ridiculous Braves trade ideas stop popping up in the rumor mill is for the team to start playing a lot better soon..
