With Acuna, Braves dreaming of return to glory days
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 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, including Mike Soroka, Luiz Gohara, Kyle Wright, Kolby Allard and Ian Anderson, a group that might help propel the club’s return to prominence.
But the central figure in those efforts figures to be Ronald Acuna Jr., a 20year-old outfielder from Venezuela who entered spring training as one of baseball’s most touted prospects and has done nothing to dispel the buzz. If anything, he has increased it by hitting .432 with four home runs in his first 52 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 midApril 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 Acuna with 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. Acuna won MVP honors with a .325 average, a 1.053 OPS and seven home runs 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 to him, so the club doesn’t really know how he will react to that.
In addition, the Braves are in the fourth year of a rebuild that’s not expected to be completed this season. They’re generally picked to finish third or fourth in the National League East, so there’s no sense rushing Acuna.
Whenever the Braves decide is the right time for Acuna to break in, Snitker expects him to handle the hype with aplomb.
“It’s a different day and age than when Chipper and Andruw and those guys came up,” Snitker said. “They (this generation) live under that microscope. They grow up with social media and all the attention.
“These guys get here and it’s nothing new to them. They’re used to it.”
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.
Still, there are times when Acuna acts his age, as he did after getting hit by a Mike Fiers curveball during a recent exhibition game against Detroit. Fiers was struggling with his control and had no intention of hitting him, but Acuna was clearly annoyed. When he reached first base, Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who used to play winter ball against Acuna’s dad, kidded him about his reaction. He also shared some tips on the game’s subtle points.
“When you’re young, you may not have the maturity or the experience to know how to react in that kind of situation,” Cabrera said. “A lot of people might not understand it, but I was a 20year-old player once, and I did many things then like he did today.”
The Braves’ assemblage of high-end prospects — including third baseman Austin Riley and outfielder Cristian Pache — earned them Baseball America’s top ranking among all organizations in 2017 and 2018.
That’s in spite of the 13 prospects the Braves had to release from their contracts in November as one of the penalties for circumventing international signing rules from 2015 to 2017. Then- GM John Coppolella was banned for life as part of the sanctions, which will also limit Atlanta’s ability to bid for international prospects until 2021.
“It’s a bump on the road as far as I’m concerned,” said Anthopoulos, the former Toronto GM who replaced Coppolella.
The Braves’ average attendance of 30,929 ranked 12th in the major leagues last season, when they opened a new stadium, SunTrust Park. Their only contractual commitments beyond this season are to first baseman Freddie Freeman, pitcher Julio Teheran and center fielder Ender Inciarte, for a total of about $38 million.
That financial flexibility, combined with the incoming talent, puts them in position to build another perennial contender. They clearly need more pop in the lineup, and it just so happens there will be some powerful sluggers available in the free agent market after the coming season.
Anthopoulos said the club will have plenty of resources at its disposal to supplement the roster, but 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.”