{"id":27866,"date":"2026-04-19T02:21:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=27866"},"modified":"2026-04-19T02:21:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:21:41","slug":"austin-riley-heating-up-with-2-opposite-field-homers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=27866","title":{"rendered":"Austin Riley heating up with 2 opposite-field homers"},"content":{"rendered":"


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ATLANTA — When Braves pitcher Bryce Elder exited Wednesday\u2019s game against the Marlins and said \u201cwhen [Austin Riley<\/a>] starts driving the ball the other way, look out,\u201d he at least gave the Phillies a warning.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Riley further distanced himself from his early-season frustrations by hitting a pair of home runs in a 9-0 win<\/a> over the Phillies on Friday night at Citizens Bank Park. The Braves’ third baseman has hit each of his three home runs within the past two games, and his two most recent were opposite-field shots.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI got off to a slow start, but I\u2019m starting to pick it up right now<\/a>,\u201d Riley said. \u201cIt feels good just to see some results with all of the hard work.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Riley ended a career-long season-opening home run drought when he homered in the Braves’ 19th game on Wednesday. But it was the opposite-field double he hit the next inning that got Elder, Braves manager Walt Weiss and others excited.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019s heating up,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cWhen he\u2019s hitting homers the other way, that\u2019s a great sign.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Riley\u2019s first opposite-field homer on Friday was a 380-foot shot he hit off of Taijuan Walker in the second inning. He cleared the right-center-field wall again with the 374-foot shot he hit off Chase Shugart in the ninth.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhen I’m going well, I\u2019m hitting the ball the other way to the big part of the field,\u201d Riley said. \u201cI stayed on the cutter there [against Walker], and then I stayed on the heater in the next couple at-bats. Past couple of weeks, I probably foul those off. But I\u2019m in a better spot to drive the ball now.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Riley produced three consecutive 30-homer seasons from 2021-23. His ’24 season was ended by a broken right hand, and an abdominal strain forced him to miss the final two months of ’25.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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ATLANTA — When Braves pitcher Bryce Elder exited Wednesday\u2019s game against the Marlins and said \u201cwhen [Austin Riley] starts driving the ball the other way, look out,\u201d he at least gave the Phillies a warning. Riley further distanced himself from his early-season frustrations by hitting a pair of home runs in a 9-0 win over … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Austin-Riley-heating-up-with-2-opposite-field-homers.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27868,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27866\/revisions\/27868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}