I wonder how many comments will actually name a deity
A quick one this time because Fridays are, well, the woofiest days. I think I made a tactical mistake in my life somewhere, but it is what it is.
Not a tactical mistake, but maybe equally annoying — 2025 has also been the year of Austin Riley’s WPA vortex. What is a WPA vortex, you ask? Basically, the short answer is that Riley’s production has been stacked into lower leverage for whatever reason in years past, and now it’s happening again, to an extreme degree.
This pattern was first noticeable in 2021 and then repeated in 2022. FanGraphs’ Clutch score is basically just a measure of how well a guy’s outputs are in higher leverage relative to lower leverage. Zero is neutral, i.e., no tendency either way, a score of 1.00 (or -1.00) suggests a reasonable skew, and a score of 2.00 (or -2.00) suggests divine favor (or divine ire). In 2021, Riley finished with an absurd -1.80 Clutch score, despite a 5.1 fWAR season. His WPA vortex this year is part of the reason the Braves slogged through that season for so long. In 2022, his Clutch score was -1.07, even though that was the year he went thermonuclear and was blasting everything in sight for a while. The pattern receded in 2023-2024 (-0.40 in both years). But now, in 2025, it’s baaaack.
Riley’s current Clutch mark is -1.42. Why is it -1.42? Because his wRC+ in high leverage is… 26. It’s 117 in low leverage and 131 in medium leverage, but boy, that 26 is brutal. This is why people keep thinking Riley’s stats are lower than they are, by the way.
But now that you know, your task is to tell me which supernatural entity he offended into being forced to carry this burden like he did in 2021-2022.
(Daily notes will be very late because yeah, it’s a Friday)