Ronald Acuña Jr. Is Back to Rescue Braves and Reclaim Status as MLB's Best Player

Until last night, it had been 362 days since Ronald Acuña Jr. last played in a Major League Baseball game. It had also been close to 600 days since he could last be counted among the very best players in the league.

With Acuña having returned to the Atlanta Braves on Friday, the first of those numbers has officially been reset. But what about the other?

His quest to reclaim his superstardom couldn't have gotten off to a better start. He clobbered the very first pitch he saw in his return, sending it 467 feet to the bleachers for a solo home run opposite the San Diego Padres.

Whether Acuña can keep the hits coming is what the Braves are going to discover throughout the rest of the season, and the stakes are high. Though they have recovered from an 0-7 start, their 24-26 record has them 5.5 games behind the New York Mets and 8.5 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East.

They pretty much need Acuña to be the Acuña of 2023, who we "dared" to rank as the No. 1 player of that season. The air quotes are necessary only because that was Shohei Ohtani's most recent season as a two-way megastar. Acuña did, after all, lead the majors with a .416 OBP while also chartering MLB's 40-70 club.

And yet, this is perhaps the ultimate case of past performance not guaranteeing future returns.

Acuña Is Set to Battle History and His Own Impulses

What Acuña has already been through boggles the mind, in ways both good and bad.

To the former, he's only 27 and he's already been a Rookie of the Year, an MVP and an All-Star four times over. He has 166 home runs and 196 stolen bases through his first 723 career games, making him a party of one in that specific club.

As for the bad, this is already the second time that Acuña has had to come back from a torn ACL, and his recovery from the first one is part of the reason that his spectacular '23 season is an outlier amid his last three years in MLB.

When the Venezuela native returned in 2022 after tearing the ACL in his right knee in 2021, the 119 games he played in yielded only a .764 OPS with 15 home runs and a 29-for-40 success rate in stealing bases. His metrics were down across the board, making it no great surprise when he copped to not being fully healthy.

That obviously changed in 2023, yet Acuña's right knee began barking again before the 2024 season even started. In retrospect, one wonders how much that contributed to him managing only a .715 OPS (not to mention 0.0 rWAR) in 49 games before suffering another ACL tear, this time in his left knee.

After what happened in 2022, it's hard not to anticipate Acuña once again needing more time to round into form than the rest of this season can provide. There is otherwise no need to wonder whether he'll be protective of his knees, as he's already committed to playing it safer on the basepaths.

"I'd rather steal 30 and play the whole season as opposed to trying to steal 70, injuring myself and missing the whole year," Acuña said in March, per Alden Gonzalez of ESPN.

What If Acuña Simply Hits His Way Back to Stardom?

Then again, Acuña may not need his legs if his bat is anything like it was in 2023.

Whereas he was mostly dependent on hitting the ball hard before then, the '23 season saw him gain a whole new elite talent overnight. The 12.2 percent decline in his strikeout rate from 2022 was the biggest of any player, and he even pulled off the rare feat of being nearly as good against breaking and offspeed stuff (.331 AVG) as he was against fastballs (.340 AVG).

This is the guy major league pitchers don't want to face in 2025. Yet even before Nick Pivetta felt his wratch on Friday night, the minor league pitchers he faced during his rehab assignment could have issued a warning.

Acuña only took 22 plate appearances in stops at the Florida Complex League and the International League, yet these saw him go 6-for-15 with two home runs and seven walks against two strikeouts.

At least for the tracked pitches he saw at the Triple-A level, we know that:

• He saw 44 pitches outside the strike zone and swung at only eight of them
• He averaged 97.6 mph on his batted balls
• He topped out at 110.5 mph

We don't know how these numbers compare to Acuña's last rehab assignment in 2022, but they sure call to mind how he was swinging it in 2023.

Anything approaching that level of offense will be a huge boon for the Braves, particularly given that Acuña is going to be working out of the leadoff spot. Prior to his return, Atlanta's leadoff men had slashed a paltry .237/.279/.324 with two homers.

Rejoining MLB's Elite Players Will Be the Hard Part

Though Acuña's rise to the pinnacle of MLB superstardom was only two years ago, it feels like it was forever ago, doesn't it?

Much has changed since then, including the ranks of MLB's elite players. Acuña's 2023 season was in an era before Ohtani took over as the league's preeminent power-speed threat. We also didn't yet know how good Bobby Witt Jr. and Gunnar Henderson could be, or that Corbin Carroll could become one of baseball's best home run hitters in addition to one of its best base thieves.

Of course, there is also that Aaron Judge guy.

His last 162 games have yielded 63 home runs, a 240 wRC+ and 13.5 fWAR, and he's now chasing both a .400 average and 14.0 fWAR. He is unlikely to achieve either, yet mentions of Ted Williams and Babe Ruth are still warranted.

And yet, Judge is the only hitter who projects to finish the season stronger than Acuña. This is according to the Steamer projection system, which foresees Acuña going off for a 156 wRC+, 22 homers and 34 steals. That third number comes off as aspirational, yet the first two could potentially be selling him short.

"We'll see" are the only two words anyone can say with any real certainty at this point. And in the event that Acuña's 2025 season comes to resemble his 2022 season, he and the Braves are in for a rough landing that would put redemption on the to-do list for 2026.

But since nobody likes a waffler, here's an actual prediction: Acuña will force his way into the top five of the National League MVP voting and the Braves will make the playoffs.

Whether or not it comes true, just remember that you heard it here first.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.