Atlanta Braves news: All about Acuna

BRAVES NEWS

Acuna is eyeing a spot on the Opening Day roster

If you like Ronald Acuna (and at this current time, who doesn’t?) then today is going to be a good day for you. For starters, Acuna spoke with Mark Bowman at this year’s Chop Fest and talked about how even though he understands the situation when it comes to service time, he’s still going to spring training with the expectation of making it on the Opening Day roster.

Advice from Albies will prove valuable to Acuna

Whether the Braves choose to bring up Ronald Acuna for Opening Day or not, it’s basically a certainty that Acuna will eventually be reunited with Ozzie Albies. The two guys spent a lot of time together at the Triple-A level last season and Acuna says that he learned a lot from Albies during that time. As Zach Dillard noted in this piece for Fox Sports South, that’ll come in handy even more now that both are going to be in the bigs this season.

“I feel like everything he’s learned he’s shared with me right away,” said Acuña, who mentioned that he and Albies spoke throughout the offseason but did not see each other in person until this weekend. “I’m very grateful to have him there advising me, guiding me along the way.”

Scout’s fantasy wing previews the Braves

Another publication is starting its annual series of team previews and this time it is Scout.com. Shawn Childs decided to cover the team from a fantasy standpoint as they gave their opinion on how they feel the Braves will fare this year. If you want a preview that goes through the expectations and potential for each player currently on the roster, then this is definitely worth your time to check out.

The 100th edition of the Talking Chop Podcast is here

The podcast right here on this lovely website of ours has hit the century mark. So naturally, Brad managed to get Carlos Collazo to return to the podcast and Eric joined in on the fun as well. It’s nearly 90 minutes of Braves talk and there’s no way that you would say no to listening to that, right?

MLB NEWS

K-Rod is going to Philly

On Sunday, two teams handed out minor league deals to relievers who have seen better days in their career. After posting a 7.82 ERA and 7.38 FIP over 25 innings with the Tigers last season before being released and signing a minor league deal with the Nationals, Francisco Rodriguez managed to latch on with the Phillies organization for this season by signing another minor-league deal.

D-Backs bring Feliz into their fold

The second team to come to an agreement with a reliever on Sunday was Arizona. According to Robert Murray of FanRag Sports, the Braves were actually interested in bringing in Neftali Feliz. Considering how much this fanbase loved Jim Johnson before the Braves traded him to the Angels, I can’t imagine that a reliever who had a similar body of work in 2017 would be popular here either. But that won’t be our problem and it’ll be Arizona’s problem instead after they agreed to sign Feliz to a minor-league contract.