The Atlanta Braves and the curious case of Ronald Acuna

Ronald Acuna had a very complex day at the yard Thursday as the Atlanta Braves opened up their postseason series with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Ronald Acuna went 3-4 with a monstrous home run and 2 RBI included. It should have been all smiles for himself and the Atlanta Braves Thursday evening, but it wasn’t due to some decisions he made and honestly some he has made in the past.

First things first, I’m glad he and Freddie Freeman both looked fully healthy as the playoffs began. That was my number one concern as the Atlanta Braves were set to take the field.

With that being said, let’s get right to the point and straight to what the whole baseball universe is talking about today.

It started in the first inning. Acuna, who we all know, has a green light almost every time he is on the bases, decided to try and jumpstart a rally by stealing second. The problem is Yadier Molina still has a cannon for an arm and is a force behind the dish still even after all these years. Obviously, Ronald Acuna was thrown out in his attempt.

A couple things I will say about the attempt.

1. If you’re going to go there, you better be darn sure you can make it
2. I would have preferred Ronald stay put and let Ozzie Albies have the bigger hole on the left side
3. I hope Ronald realizes these outs are more crucial than ever and he isn’t chasing a 40-40 season anymore

As most of you will recall, Ozzie went on to walk and the Atlanta Braves were only able to muster 1 run in the first. Who knows what would have happened if Acuna decided to stay put there?

I’m not too worked up about the stolen base thing though, sometimes the aggressiveness pays off and you get rewarded. The Atlanta Braves just simply didn’t here.

The more newsworthy moment of the two though is without a doubt the lack of hustle (again) by Acuna. A opposite field fly ball off the bat of Acuna in the seventh happened, and he didn’t run out of the box thinking he got enough of it to clear the fence. Obviously it didn’t and Acuna ended up being limited to a single.

The Braves ended up with nothing in the inning after Josh Donaldson lined into a double play to end the inning.

Of course that led to the question of what would have happened if Acuna was on third? Would the Atlanta Braves had scored another run? No one knows that answer, including the media who were quick to pin the loss on Ronald Acuna.

Now as I said no one knows that answer, and obviously that includes me. For me personally, the one rule of baseball should always be, if you do nothing else, always hustle. We all know Ronald’s history so far, and he has made some mistakes, but … let me be extremely clear, this loss is not all Ronald Acuna’s fault.

This loss has many layers such as another bullpen implosion late in the game, and simply bad luck.

With that being said, my main concern is the clubhouse and how cohesive it needs to be. Ronald Acuna might be the most talented person on this Earth playing baseball right now not named Mike Trout. He needs to win this clubhouse over though. Admittedly, some of these comments make me uneasy of that

The bottom line is, Ronald Acuna needs to run the ball out (unless he crushes a ball like he did in the 9th last night). I really have no problem if he wants to jog those out.

Ironically, the shuffle step and the celebrating of that bomb drew a little bit of the ire of Cardinals pitcher Carlos Martinez, who had the following to say about it

I would encourage anyone to do a little research on Carlos Martinez and tell me that isn’t a double standard though. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

In closing, hopefully this is the last time we have this discussion. Acuna is way too good for this and maybe the national media being so heavy on this will be the final light bulb clicking for him. I hope he continues to be himself, but I just want him to hustle.

In a perfect world, Ronald will come out for the rest of this series and put the Atlanta Braves on his back and carry us to the NLCS.

So Braves country, put your frustrations out there about the lack of hustle, but again don’t be foolish and put this entire loss on Acuna’s shoulders.