Acuna turning heads with hitting prowess
Braves rookie bashing homers in playoff push
Expectations were high for Atlanta Braves left fielder Ronald Acuna Jr.
The 20-year-old bashed his way through three levels of the minors in 2017, batting .325 with 21 home runs and 44 stolen bases combined between stops at Florida (Class-A Advanced), Mississippi (Double-A) and Gwinnett (Triple-A), improving his on-base plus slugging every step of the way. At the start of the year he was at the top of MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 outfield prospects list with high marks for power, speed and overall hitting ability, traits serving him well at the major league level.
The young Venezuelan, who missed a month due to an ACL sprain in his left knee, is hitting .268 with 19 home runs and a .918 OPS. Only San Diego Padres third baseman Christian Villanueva has more home runs among rookies, and that’s with 79 more plate appearances than Acuna.
Acuna’s MLB resume also includes being the youngest player ever to hit a home run in five straight games. He’s the youngest player to hit a home run twice on back-toback days. He’s the youngest to lead off a game with a home run in three straight games.
On Monday against the Miami Marlins in front of the hometown crowd, Acuna did something only three other players have done since Woodrow Wilson was president: lead off both games of a doubleheader with a home run. And on Tuesday he joined Willie Mays (1954) as the only players in baseball history to hit a home run in their first official at-bat in five straight games.
“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Wow, this is something else,’” Braves manager Brian Snitker told Mark Bowman of MLB.com on Tuesday night, a night Acuna also recorded his first multi-homer game. “You’re experiencing it and enjoying a young kid with a lot of talent having fun playing baseball.”
Acuna is having even more fun since being moved to the top of the order in the team’s first game after the All-Star break. The phenom is batting .367 with a 1.248 OPS from the leadoff spot, creating runs at a league-high rate that is more than twice the league average after accounting for league and park effects (228 wRC+).
No wonder the Braves have the second-best record in the NL since moving Acuna to the top spot. Atlanta is 16-10 in that span, boosting its playoff chances from 37 to 65 per cent. The Braves’ division title hopes more than doubled from 23 to 47 per cent.
He’s mashing pitches of all types, too. Acuna is batting .275 with a .911 OPS against fastballs (four-seam, sinkers and cutters), .375 with a 1.111 OPS against change-ups, striking out just once every nine at-bats ending on the pitch, and .444 with a 1.204 OPS against curveballs. However, he does struggle to make contact against sliders and sinkers on the inner half of the plate, pushing an overall strikeout rate past the league average (28 vs. 22 per cent).
Despite that, Acuna’s season puts him in favourable company. Houston Astros shortstop Carlos Correa, the 2015 Rookie of the Year, hit .279 with a .857 OPS at age 20. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, the reigning NL home run king, hit .259 with a 31 per cent strikeout rate in 2010, creating runs at a rate 18 per cent higher than the league average at 20 years old.
Acuna is better than both on all counts, and is behind only Mike Trout, Ted Williams, Rogers Hornsby and Frank Robinson for most runs created above an average player as a 20-year-old rookie.
There’s only one person standing in the way of Acuna and this year’s NL Rookie of the Year award: 19-year-old Washington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto.
Soto, like Acuna, is also on a historic run. He’s hitting .293 with 15 home runs and could join Mel Ott and Tony Conigliaro (1964) as the only teenagers to have a slugging percentage over .500. Soto could also be the only teenager to ever maintain an onbase percentage of .400 or higher.
Those two traits likely keep Soto as the favourite, but if Acuna continues to fuel the Braves’ playoff run we could see a changing of the guard in the near future.