Baseball’s New Wave: The Young Superstars Taking Over the Game
Though not considered a top prospect Ronald Acuña Jr proved to be a big star for the Atlanta Braves CO33300 von
CHAPTER 1 Ronald Acuña Jr Few players were more popular with Atlanta Braves fans than Chipper Jones So when Jones was asked about Ronald Acuña Jr the team’s 20-year-old left fielder during spring training of 2018 people listened He’s as good a prospect as I’ve seen Jones said It did not take long to see what all the excitement was about Just one week into his Major League Baseball MLB career the
6-foot 180-pound Venezuelan prospect had proved he belonged Debuting in April 2018 Acuña produced 13 hits in his first eight games including five doubles and two home runs He became the first player in Braves history to tally five extra-base hits in his first five games By season’s end the player who was barely known just one season earlier was the league’s Rookie of the Year Scouted as early as 14 years old Acuña signed with the Braves for 100,000 in 2014 That was a modest figure compared with the game’s most sought-after young international players And even one year before his MLB debut Acuña remained relatively unknown When MLB Pipeline
came out with its Top 100 Prospects lists in 2017 the young Venezuelan was nowhere to be found The lack of expectations created a lack of pressure that Acuña seems to savor When I signed I wasn’t really considered a highly touted prospect so now it’s even better he said in 2018 I feel the same way I’ve never really had that pressure Acuña opened the 2017 season at the Class-A Advanced level That is three steps below the major leagues By the end of the year he was obliterating Triple-A pitching and was widely considered one of the best prospects in baseball Prospect tools are graded on a 20 to 80 scale with a 20 being the worst and 80 the
