Atlanta Braves Top 100 Scouting Report: 16. Ronald Acuna
Atlanta Braves Outfielder Ronald Acuna
Who Is He?
Acuna was signed as a 16 year-old in 2014 out of Venezuela. As a December 1997 birthday, he was one of the youngest members of that signing class. Even still, the Braves decided to start his career stateside instead of sending him to the DSL, and he excelled, moving up through the GCL Braves to the advanced rookie Danville Braves in 2015 as a 17 year old. His season totals were 237 plate appearances with a .269/.380/.438 slash line, 14 doubles, 4 triples, 4 homers, and 16 steals while putting up a 28/42 BB/K ratio.
The Braves raved all offseason about what they saw from Acuna, starting in fall instructs, then continuing in spring, and they pushed the 18 year-old to full-season Rome as the starting center fielder. He’s responded very well by hitting .289/.373/.378 (through 5/4) with 2 home runs and 6 stolen bases while putting up a 11/14 BB/K ratio.
Next: Acuna's scouting report
Scouting Report
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Acuna is listed as 6′ tall and 180 pounds. He hits and throws right handed. I would not be surprised if he’s an inch or two taller and 15-20 pounds heavier than that, but certainly not bad weight by any means. Acuna is the type of kid that walks on the field and you point him out and identify him as an athlete. He has that swagger, that build, that extra “something” that separates the great from the elite.
Hitting
Acuna stands very balanced at the plate, and he exhibits tremendous pitch recognition for a player as young as he is. I watched a game where he struck out once, but finished the game 1-5, and you would think he had bad swings or missed bad pitches, but that wasn’t true at all. He simply missed at a pitch that later he tagged well right at someone for an out. So in the games I saw, not only did he adjust to pitches he saw over time, but he did it within the same game in multiple games I saw, which is absolutely incredible for a player of his age.
Acuna has a solid swing with good lift that should allow him the ability to get good power to all fields, and he’s displayed that, going opposite field and pull side both, depending on how he’s being pitched, something you typically see in much more mature hitters. Acuna has a good eye not just for the zone, but also for where he can handle a pitch well, sometimes letting a strike go by early in the count knowing it wasn’t in an area that he can best handle. As teams pitch him to areas, he may have to attack pitches more early in counts, but from what I saw, I don’t see any particular weak spots in his hitting zone.
Base Running/Fielding
Acuna has incredible speed. He’s not as fast as his teammate Ray-Patrick Didder, but he’s still got exceptional speed on the base paths, with the type of speed that wouldn’t surprise if he stole 25-30 bases over a full season. So far in 2016, he is 6/10 (through Tuesday) in stolen bases, but he has been part of a number of failed hit-and-runs thus far that have cost him a caught stealing, so those numbers aren’t exactly accurate. I saw three such occurrences in the games I watched, and if he’s been caught four times, even if the other time was a pure caught stealing, that mean’s he’s really only been caught stealing once this season on true steal attempts. Acuna does a great job of taking an extra base, but I did notice that he has a habit of watching the ball in play if he’s hit the ball rather than turning to his coaches on the bases, which is simply something he’ll learn out of.
To put it bluntly, Didder is an elite defender in center field – as in, 65-70 grade center field defender in his center field routes from some scouts I talked to, and he was moved to right field for Acuna to play center in Rome. That says really all you need to know about the quality of Acuna’s defensive abilities. He’s so smooth on the field. I hesitate to invoke the name, but he does remind me some of a young Andruw Jones patrolling in the outfield. He rarely seems to be working hard, but yet he’s getting to balls that he had to cover a ton of ground to get to with ease. In fact, in spring training camp, one of the guys Andruw was specifically working with was Acuna. I can not think of a better guy to mentor young Acuna’s skills.
Video
Next: Future outlook
Future Outlook
Seriously, I thought I had put Acuna a bit high by having him in my top 20 after one season. I’m not so sure after watching him more if he wouldn’t work his way into my top 5, certainly my top 10 in the entire system. He is one of the prospects in the wave after Ozzie Albies/Dansby Swanson/Rio Ruiz get here in the next year or so that Braves fans should get very excited about. I seriously believe that he’s that type of prospect that makes an milb.tv subscription worth it. The Rome team has a few players like that, but Acuna is absolutely one of those guys.
I would wager that Acuna spends the majority of this season in Rome, but I wouldn’t put it beyond the Braves to promote him to Carolina in late July to give him some run in Carolina. Excellent play there could even encourage a similar path as Albies saw this year, playing his age 19 season starting in Mississippi.
Next: Braves Minor League Database
That would be an incredible leap, but I do think there’s a measure of power here along with speed that will be exciting for Braves fans for years to come.