Braves: Marlins Bring Out the Fire in Ronald Acuña Jr.

It’s never smart to poke a bear, but that’s exactly what the Miami Marlins have done by hitting Ronald Acuña Jr. against, which led to an Atlanta Braves win.

Ronald Acuna Jr. got the part started in game one for the Atlanta Braves by hitting one of the most impressive home runs I’ve ever seen hit.

But after that thinks got shaky for the Braves as Max Fried struggled and gave up 4 runs over 4 innings leaving the game with his team down 4-1.

In the bottom of the third inning was when things got interesting. The Fish had just taken a 4-1 lead and Sandy Alcantra was starting to get on a roll.

After getting Austin Riley out to start the inning and getting ahead 0-1 to Acuna, he then throws 97 right at his read end.

Now, do I think he meant to hit Acuna? No.

If he did, then he’s the dumbest pitcher in the world because why would you hit someone in a playoff game, especially with the hitters the Braves have coming up behind him.

I really think the issue is that Don Mattingly stresses that his pitchers to pitch inside to Acuna and a lot of them are young and don’t know how to pitch inside.

But it is really curious that he’s the one guy they keep plunking and he’s the one guy where inside pitches just seem to ‘get away from them.’

And then there is this…

So I don’t know, maybe Alcantra is just that stupid. I mean, he did say this after the game.

Whatever the case may be, it seemed to spark the Braves as they rallied to score two runs in the inning that Acuna was plunked and then went on to win 9-5 and take game one.

But it was after the game when things got even chippier as you have Alcantra saying he’s ready to fight, and then Acuna sending off a stream of social media posts that were legendary.

Clearly, there is no love between the Marlins and Acuna. For whatever reason, they decided to make Acuna their enemy back when Jose Urena hit him simply because he was playing too good.

Major League Baseball didn’t do anything to stop it then, and so here we are and Acuna will continue to hit home runs against the Marlins and they’ll continue to come inside on him and occasionally plunk him.

My only fear in this series is that they’ll hit that sore wrist (oh yea, he’s doing all this damage to them while playing hurt). If that happens then we may have a real brouhaha on our hands.

I really hope it doesn’t come to that because I’d hate to see playings get suspended in the postseason.

Hopefully this just motivates and Acuna and the rest of his team to stomp out the Marlins in this series and make quick work of them.