USA TODAY International Edition
With Acuna, Braves dreaming of return to glory
KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Alex Anthopoulos opens the door to his suite at Champions Stadium, and a large slice of Atlanta Braves history walks out. Former executive John Schuerholz and ex-manager Bobby Cox, both Hall of Famers, took in the spring training game with the club’s new general manager.
John Smoltz had stopped by earlier in the day, and former teammates and fellow Hall of Famers Chipper Jones and Tom Glavine visited a few days before.
For a once-proud franchise immersed in a four-year spell of losing seasons and rocked by a cheating scandal, all those figures serve as a reminder of an illustrious and not-so-distant past.
For a sign of a possible return to the glory days, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, you need only peek in the direction of the young fellow wearing No. 82 and turning heads wherever he goes.
The Braves have compiled an enviable collection of young arms, featuring the likes of Mike Soroka, Luiz Gohara, Kyle Wright, Kolby Allard and Ian Anderson.
But the central figure figures to be Ronald Acuna Jr., a 20-year-old outfielder from Venezuela who entered spring training as one of baseball’s most touted prospects and has done nothing to dispel the buzz around him. If anything, he has increased it by hitting .417 with three homers in his first 36 spring at-bats.
Braves followers are now wondering how the team will justify excluding him from the opening-day roster, the expected move because waiting until mid-April to call him up would grant Atlanta one more year of contractual control.
“He’s a legit kid. What you read, what you hear, everything is true,” said manager Brian Snitker, one of many who compare him to a young Andruw Jones. “The kid’s a gifted baseball player, no doubt about it. Can he get better? Yeah.”
He did throughout last season in a stunning display of precocious talent while playing the whole year at 19. Despite a slow start, Acuna batted .287 with a .814 on-base plus slugging percentage in 28 games at Class A before earning a promotion to AA, where he delivered a .326 batting average and .895 OPS.
In 54 games at AAA, Acuna batted .344 with a .940 OPS. Sense a pattern here? Well, it didn’t stop when he played in the Arizona Fall League, where Acuna won MVP honors with a .325 average, a 1.053 OPS and seven homers in 23 games.
Asked how he kept improving as the competition got harder, Acuna shrugged and said in Spanish: “I don’t think in terms of whether the next level is going to be tougher. I just go out to do my job, have fun and do what I know how to do, which is to play hard and play my game.”
As thrilled as they were with his performance, the Braves want to proceed cautiously. For one, Anthopoulos points out Acuna never stayed long enough at any level for the league to adjust just to him. Also, the Braves are in the fourth year of a rebuild that’s not expected to be completed this year — they’re generally picked to finish third or fourth in the National League East — so there’s no sense in rushing Acuna.
A five-tool player who can handle any of the outfield positions, Acuna has his own style. He strides to the plate confidently, draws a cross with his bat on the dirt behind the umpire and taps it before approaching the batter’s box. Early in camp there was a minor flap over the way Acuna wore his cap during an interview, but that’s a non-issue now.
The Braves’ assemblage of high-end prospects — which also includes third baseman Austin Riley and outfielder Cristian Pache — earned them Baseball
America’s top ranking among all organizations in 2017 and ’18. That’s in spite of the 13 prospects the Braves had to release in November as one of the penalties for circumventing international signing rules from 2015 to 2017. Then-GM John Coppolella was banned for life.
Anthopoulos said before deciding what kind of help to pursue, he wants to see what this season brings. “I’ve said a lot of times that 2018 will tell us a lot about what we need to do,” Anthopoulos said, “because we have a lot of talented players who have a chance to fill those spots for us, and the more that happens, the better position we’re going to be in.”
It could be good enough to allow Braves fans to fantasize about a return to the days of the Jones boys, Smoltz, Glavine et al.