Austin Riley mashes his way to NL Player of the Week honors

Austin Riley has killed it in July, and he’s been awarded NL Player of the Week as a result:

Riley put up a 270 wRC+ in those seven games, despite starting with an 0-for-4 on Monday. He three homers, reached base in nearly half of his plate appearances (.484 OBP), and finished just marginally behind Josh Rojas for the most NL fWAR over that span (0.7 to Rojas’ 0.8). He did, however, substantially out-xwOBA Rojas (.446 to .395) in that span, though many other players out-xwOBAed both of them.

Riley now has a 148 wRC+ and 3.1 fWAR on the season, and has a 298 wRC+ in July so far (i.e., he hit better on July 1-3 than July 4-11). We’ll see what he has in store for the Mets, who come to town to kick off a three-game set with the Braves this evening.

Riley is the first Brave to win this award so far in 2022; the Braves won in three times in 2021, including RIley doing so in mid-May that year.