Now that most baseball experts have declared the Atlanta Braves dead in 2025, the en vogue thing to do is to try to see how they can strip the Braves down for parts with Ronald Acuña Jr. the most popular name of late. No matter how impossible an Acuña Jr. trade actually looks, experts are chiming in left and right thinking Atlanta should send him out of town for one reason or another.
Atlanta at least considering trading Acuña Jr. isn't that wild of a notion. They will almost certainly conclude that any trade they would be willing to except for one of the most talented players in baseball on an extremely friendly contract is one that no sane buyer would actually offer. However, it doesn't hurt to at least get an estimate from interested parties.
However, ESPN went a step further and put together three Ronald Acuña Jr. trade proposals from different teams. Unfortunately, all that really did was showcase how unlikely such a trade actually is.
ESPN's Ronald Acuña Jr. trade proposals conclusive proof that trading him now is brutally tough
Now, ESPN's David Schoenfield certainly put some real thought into these proposals involving the Brewers, Mariners, and Rays and they are not crazy in a vacuum (except the Rays one, that one is terrible). To trade for a talent like Acuña, it is going to require multiple top 100 prospects at positions of need who are also close to big league ready. Anything less than that is not going to get Alex Anthopoulos to answer the phone. All three of these packages have top 100 prospects who are shortstops (definitely a need) in addition big time talent in addition to that.
The problem is the amount and type of team control that Acuña would come with. It was hard enough to find a trade package for 2.5 years of Juan Soto back in 2022. Acuña is debatably more valuable and, more importantly, has an extra year of team control and two of the years . The first Soto trade package isn't the ceiling for an Acuña trade. It might be the floor.
Now is it fun to think about Jesus Made, Logan Henderson, and Sal Frelick in Braves uniforms? Of course it is. Do Colt Emerson and Lazaro Montes have a chance to be real monsters in Atlanta? You bet. Unfortunately, both sides give up too much in almost every logical scenario to actually get a deal done.