Atlanta Braves: 3 reasons benching Ronald Acuña was right decision

Lesson learned

You hope, at the very least, this is a big lesson learned for Acuña. And it all depends on how he responds.

I didn’t exactly love his response in his post-game interview. It would have been great to see him show a little more humility and admit that he was wrong rather than just saying he respects the manager’s decision.

But, the language barrier and having to hear it through an interpreter isn’t a fair judgment of how he actually felt. I was also watching a clip of the interview and not the entire thing, so I won’t take too much out of that response.

Plus, his manager said that he handled it in a mature way and knew that he messed up, so that was good to hear.

His body language in the dugout and during the clip that I saw looked like someone who was embarrassed and someone who had just been humbled, which I think could be a good thing.

Again, that will depend on how he comes out on Tuesday.

As most Atlanta Braves fans are aware, Bobby Cox faced a similar situation with Andruw Jones back in the day and handled it in a very similar fashion.

Andruw Jones is probably my favorite Atlanta Braves player ever, and he handled his benching as a young player as well as one could expect and we never saw him not hustle again. And in the end, he had a lot of respect for Bobby Cox.

AJ didn’t change the flare that he played with, and I certainly hope Acuña doesn’t either.

I think it was Jeff Francoeur during the broadcast on Sunday that said something along the lines of Snitker allows the players to basically do what they want to get ready for the game, all that he asks is that they hustle during the game.

Hopefully Acuña has learned his lesson and this will never come up again. I think we’ll see Acuña play mad the rest of the season to make up for this embarrassing moment.