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It’s around 5 PM EST right now, so it seemed like the perfect time for the Braves to break some news concerning their latest round of cuts at spring training. A handful of players were were reassigned to minor league camp, such as Dustin Peterson, Christian Colon, Rob Brantley and some guy named Ronald Acuña Jr.
The #Braves today reassigned six players to minor league camp, including OF Ronald Acuña Jr., C Rob Brantley, INF Christian Colon, OF Dustin Peterson and RHPs Josh Graham and Miguel Socolovich.
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) March 19, 2018
Obviously, the huge story here is that this basically confirms that the Braves are indeed going to stash Acuña at the Triple-A level to start the season, despite the fact that he has spent the vast majority of spring training looking like someone who is clearly ready to ply his trade at the major league level.
The only logical explanation is that the Braves are doing this with service-time concerns in mind, as they definitely can’t say that he isn’t ready. They could say that Preston Tucker did well enough to beat him out for the job on Opening Day. While Tucker has indeed had a very good spring training, it’s pretty clear that once the Braves no longer have to worry about service-time concerns and finally call up Acuña, Tucker’s hold on the starting job will be tenuous — if not completely non-existent.
Shortly after the announcement was made, Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos spoke with the media and said that Acuña could get promoted “hopefully very soon.”
Anthopoulos on Acuña: "right now, just go down, play, get into a routine of playing of playing every day, nine innings, the flow of the season. Get into the flow, keep doing what he was doing and he'll find his way back here, hopefully very soon" #Braves
— 680 The Fan & 93.7FM (@680TheFan) March 19, 2018
Anthopoulos on Acuña: "the more we talked about it organizationally, from a philosophical standpoint, having more development time, no one's ever been hurt by that. We do feel like it's probably best overall from a philosophical standpoint to get him more development time"
— 680 The Fan & 93.7FM (@680TheFan) March 19, 2018
Either way, you definitely can’t say that Acuña is being held down due to performance or readiness, since he made it abundantly clear that he’s ready for the bigs.
Today’s news isn’t a shock but it’s more of a confirmation that we’re just going to have to be patient and that the Braves (for better or worse) are willing to throw two weeks of Acuña to the wayside in exchange for another year.
It stinks for us fans who want to see him as soon as possible and all we can do now is ask Cubs fans how they felt when they did the same thing with Kris Bryant back in 2015.