Austin Riley's Stellar Performance Boosts Braves Over Challenges

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00:00Austin Riley. He's healthy. That's what I'm trying to say now. He's good at baseball still.

00:08We talked about Austin Riley being one of the guys you want to possibly buy low on and

00:13hope that you're going to get a healthy version of at some point. Well, guess what, boys and

00:16girls, we got it. Last 15 days heading into the weekend's action, five home runs, 10 RBI,

00:2311 runs scored, hitting 360 with a 439 OBP, a 740 slugging and 1179 OPS. He's one of the

00:31hottest hitters in baseball right now. I've been going for the total base props for him

00:35lately. I've been going for those overs on the RBI where you always get nice plus money.

00:40And Austin Riley's been great. And you got to give credit to the Braves, too. The Braves

00:43have been absolutely tremendous. You lose Ronald Acuna, you lose Spencer Strider at

00:50the beginning of the year. Michael Harris, you know, I mean, I feel like they haven't

00:55had him all year with the way he's playing. But you lose all those pieces and you're still

01:0010 games over 500 if you're the Braves. And that is incredible. And a big part of that,

01:03too, is the other guy on this list who's also having a great couple of weeks who's red hot

01:07is Chris Sale, who is working his way into the top of that conversation. Forget comeback

01:11player of the year. He's already the guy at the very top of that list of minus money.

01:15He's in that mix for Cy Young right now with Wheeler, with Suarez, with Glass. Now, last

01:19three games for him, 19 innings, 2-1 record, 22 strikeouts, just four walks. He's got a

01:24sub-2 ERA and a sub-1 whiff over that spam. Now, Matt, you're looking at Chris Sale. Was

01:29this the biggest offseason acquisition that wasn't Ohtani when you think about it now

01:34and how important he has been to hold this rotation together in Atlanta?

01:38Oh, retrospectively, of course. That's why you're asking the question. But let's go back

01:42to when the deal happened. Chris Sale himself said something that I thought was very profound

01:47and I've always tried to bring it forward. Chris Sale as a three, there's no pressure.

01:52No one cares. And he went into the season with that mindset. Now, here he is. And to

01:57your point, he is holding it all together because he was that three that didn't fail.

02:03And he went in with that mindset. He's a one. Chris Sale will always be a one from the neck

02:08up. But regardless, as a three, an SP3 going in there and having that calmness, yeah, 1000%

02:15this is going to weigh out as the second best acquisition, if not second or third.

02:20Sure. Yeah. And by the way, I can just remind everybody, all they gave up for him was Von

02:24Grissom. Highway robbery. And I said at the time, Von Grissom, incredibly overrated prospect,

02:31a guy who doesn't have a great glove and doesn't have a good bat. And if you don't have one

02:35of those two things, I don't know how you're playing in the major leagues. And Von Grissom

02:38or Chris Sale as highway robbery. And this is what the Braves do. They take these prospects,

02:43as good as the Braves organization, you get the Acuna. Oh, the Acuna is the, well,

02:47the problem is because you get Acuna, you get Albies, you get all these guys that come through

02:51and are rock stars. Yep. And then you get the Christian paches and the drew waters and all

02:55the other guys too. They're highly overrated and the Von Grissom ecosystem. No. Yeah. When you

03:02create a good one, you could sell it off and then they've been able to do it. God bless the Braves,

03:07man. What an incredible job they've done this off season to stay relevant. You can lose your,

03:11they lost the MVP in the Cy Young basically. And they're just 10 games over 500. That's it.

03:17I mean, how many teams can say that to show you that baseball is a team game though? You know,

03:21it's not just one player. It's funny though. But when one player is on a downturn, cause now we're

03:26going to turn our attention to the three down here. When one player's on a downturn, isn't it

03:30amazing the same way as one guy is good. He puts team on his back. It can suck a black hole of

03:36ineptitude. I mean, my gosh.

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