He was the reigning, defending, undisputed National League Most Valuable Player in 2023. He did something no professional baseball player had ever done by hitting 40-plus homers and stealing 70-plus bases in a single season. He was 26 years old.

And then 2024 happened for Ronald Acuña, Jr. and the Atlanta Braves.

How acquired

Acuña, Jr. was an international free agent signing by the Atlanta Braves in 2014. He signed an eight-year, $100 million extension with club options for each of 2026, 2027, and 2028 early in the 2019 season, about 11 months after his MLB debut. The rest has been hsitory.

What were the expectations?

The moon? What else?

In 2023, Acuña seemingly put it all together. Power, speed, plate discipline, all the attributes that make a generational talent. He posted a 9.1 fWAR – almost twice the total of his next-best season – with a 171 wRC+. Oh, and that wRC+ came with him underhitting his absurd .460 xwOBA by over .030. He was also coming off playing in 150-plus games for only the second time in his six big league seasons after injuries and the COVID-shortened 2020 season robbed him of more than 200 games combined.

There was talk of a 50-home run, 50-stolen base season. Could he repeat as NL MVP like Dale Murphy had done four decades prior? Could he win a batting title? Could he pace the NL in home runs?

Let’s put it this way: the ZiPS projections had Acuña’s central estimate as over a full win higher than anyone else in baseball.

So yeah, the expectations were the moon.

2024 results

From the beginning of the season, Acuña couldn’t seen to get comfortable or find his groove or whatever euphemism that could be used to say that he was not having a good start to his 2024 campaign.

Ten games in, he had a 105 wRC+. After another ten, he was sitting at 135, but then there was a little slump that tumbled him back down to 101. May was similarly inconsistent, and he had just a 111 wRC+ in that span. It’s hard to point to just one thing that was bugging him — everything was just off. He was hitting more grounders, part of a teamwide grounderitis affliction that persisted through the early part of the season, but his batted ball profile was worse in every respect, not just because of an increased grounder rate. One of his big gains last year was continuing to mash the ball without missing it in the zone, something that’s largely impossible for lesser humans who have to give up contact for power, but his contact rate collapsed relative to his MVP campaign.

He did have 16 bases through 49 games, but just four homers. After finishing 2023 with a walk total almost rivaling his strikeout total, his strikeout rate nearly doubled with only a modest gain in walk rate. When he tore his left ACL against the Pirates, his year ended with a modest 1.0 fWAR and 105 wRC+. His xwOBA was down by over .100 from 2023, such that underhitting it by quite a bit again wasn’t really a huge consolation or anything. His defense was largely the same as before — only his arm kept him from taking a huge bath on value defensively.

What went right?

Relative to expectations, after his sensational 2023, it’s hard to say much of anything went “right” for Acuña. Pretty much the only thing you can say is that, on paper, he wasn’t bad or even average. 1.0 fWAR in 222 PAs is still an above-average, 2.7/600 pace. His throwing arm was great. An xwOBA approaching .350 would be great for most guys in MLB. And yet, it all just felt kind of horrible, and then he got injured.

That’s not to say he never came up big. He played a huge role in the Braves’ massive comeback on April 6, driving in the tying run in the eighth, moving up to second, and then scoring the winning run later in the inning.

And there was this bolt from the blue game-tying homer on May 3, though the Braves ultimately lost this game:

These two highlights being what they are tells you a lot about the reigning MVP’s season — his two biggest offensive highlights were a game-tying flare and a game-tying homer, neither worth even .300 in WPA.

What went wrong?

The most obvious: Acuña played in just about one third of the 2024 season, which is better than not playing at all, but was still one of the most brutal things to happen to the team over the course of the campaign. Then we get into the fact that his production was just a shadow of what he managed during his MVP campaign — just compare .250/.351/.365 to .337/.416/.596, for starters.

Probably the most glaring thing was a power outage. We’re talking four homers in two months, a career-worst .427 xSLG (never lower than .468 in his career, and that was coming off injury in 2022), an average exit velocity and hard-hit rate below his career averages, the first time his barrel-on-contact rate fell below double digits, and the first time his barrels-per-PA rate fell below six percent. It was a bloodbath.

Drilling down further, Acuña’s problems seemed to be pitch-specific. He couldn’t get around on four-seamers — perhaps not as a result of any physical limitation, but he failed to do so all the same. A .320 xwOBA on four-seamers is, frankly, pretty pathetic, and made worse that he’s never been below .360 in a season against them. He had similar massive drops in his effectiveness against sliders and cutters, but not sinkers, curves, or changeups. But it was the four-seamers that were the real issue, and pitchers just kept pounding him with things he probably should’ve crushed. On top of this, Acuña has often been slightly vulnerable to getting beat away, with a tendency to chase and miss even when given the opportunity to get his hands extended, but in 2024, he pretty much got brutalized at the top of the zone — not catching up to those four-seamers. Whether because he was trying to cover the outside better, or for some other reason, it was a huge problem for him that dampened his power production and tanked his batting line in general.

Sometimes, this led to miserable games, like the Braves’ 4-2 loss to Cleveland on April 27. Acuña struck out in his first two PAs, and had two brutal groundouts late: one with the go-ahead run on second and two outs, and one in extra innings after the Braves had given up two runs in the top of the 11th. You can go back and watch his PAs in that game, but essentially:

• In the first, he fouled off three meaty pitches and eventually struck out on a borderline cutter away.
• In the third, he was rung up on a clear ball for strike three, after not seeing a single meaty pitch.
• In the sixth, he barreled a changeup away and was “rewarded” with a barreled out to deep center.
• In the eighth, his groundout came on a four-seamer down the middle.
• And, lastly, in the 11th, his groundout was on a hanging slider that could’ve been crushed to tie the game.

And, of course, there was stuff like this — a chance for heroics, but yet another hard-hit ball into the grounder instead.

2025 outlook

Acuña, Jr. will be back with Atlanta in 2025, although based on the comments made by Alex Anthopoulos in early November, the team isn’t expecting him to be ready until some time after Opening Day.

Until last year, the worst season of his career had come in 2022, when he missed the start of the season as a result of tearing his right ACL in 2021. Will that be a historical indicator that foretells how his 2025 campaign goes? Or will he return to a form that more closely resembles his All-Star performance, if not his MVP campaign?

Still in his prime – and under team control through 2028 – Acuña remains part of the core of this era of Atlanta Braves baseball, but his injury issues have muddied the waters of what has otherwise been a fantastic career. He still projects as a 4-5 WAR player, which is kind of insane considering that he’s coming off injury and a blah-for-him, somewhat-above-average-for-anyone-else two months before that, but that’s a testament to his talent and his body of work.