Atlanta Braves 2017 Top 10 Prospects: Where Are They Now?
By Seth Carter
8. Ronald Acuna Jr.
Ronald Acuna Jr. was signed by the Braves on July 2, 2014, as an amateur free agent at the age of 16. The process of finding the best players in the world involves traveling far and wide to work out teenage ballplayers in faraway countries in an attempt to evaluate how their skills would play out in “The Show.”
Acuna was only 5-10, 160 pounds when scouts began to take notice of him in Venezuela. He showed off his powerful yet strikeout-prone swing and scared off 29 other teams. That’s not the only reason every team passed on him, but for the sake of brevity, it was one.
The Braves offered him a $100k signing bonus, which was twice as much as the next biggest offer.
Jesse Sanchez wrote a really interesting article covering Acuna’s scouting, the international prospects from that year and where they are now, and loads of intriguing information. Check that story out for more on Acuna’s journey to the Braves.
Acuna broke into Rookie Ball at age 17 and played in 55 games, hitting .269/.380/.438 with 16 stolen bases and 14 doubles. He would only hit four homers in each of his first two seasons, but the power would grow along with his body.
In 2016, Acuna stole another 14 bases and posted an even better .392 on-base percentage.
Heading into the 2017 season he was finally on the national radar, Baseball America rated him as the #67 overall prospect and Baseball Prospectus had him #31 in the game. All of the teams that passed on Acuna were starting to second-guess themselves.
He headed into the 2018 season as the number one prospect in all of baseball.
Acuna would live up to the hype, although the hype was late to the party. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 2018 and was fifth in MVP voting last season as he threatened to have a 40/40 season.