The news that Ronald Acuña Jr. will undergo season-ending surgery on his left knee is terrible for the Atlanta Braves and terrible for baseball. But mostly, it is terrible for Acuña, a radiant star who again will be dimmed for too long.
When healthy in 2023, he was Acuña in full, producing an unprecedented 41-homer, 73-stolen base season, earning his first National League MVP Award by unanimous acclaim. His performance was all the more uplifting because it followed the same type of season-ending ACL injury in July 2021 to his other knee and a 2022 season in which he was still compromised physically. He made it back, all the way back. Offensively, defensively, on the bases, he was a sight to behold.
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The easy thing to say to Acuña, using the vernacular of the day, would be, “You got this.” Which, as one of the best athletes in the world, he probably does. But let’s not forget how much the 2021 injury devastated him. His mother, Leonelis Blanco, told ESPN, “He cried every day. It wasn’t just every day. It was the whole day. He was distraught, crying, wondering about his leg.”
Acuña was 23 then. He is 26 now, married with two young sons, a veteran in his seventh season. Yes, he knows he will recover from this surgery, and what the recovery will entail. But that doesn’t make his path any easier. And it doesn’t change an increasingly depressing, what-might-have-been aspect of his career.
Mike Trout won three MVPs and finished second four other times before injuries started to derail him. Acuña, like Trout, was Rookie of the Year at age 20. But unlike Trout, he is being robbed of significant time early in his career. His first torn ACL limited him to 82 games in 2021 and 119 in ’22. This one occurred two months earlier in the season, in his 49th game of 2024. Based on his previous experience, he might not be the same for at least part of ’25.
Which likely brings us to, gulp, 2026 for the next potential glimpse of Acuña at an MVP level. He will be 28 that year, still in his baseball prime. If he stays relatively healthy from that point forward, he can still fulfill his Hall of Fame potential. But who can predict how this all might play out, especially now that he has twice suffered freakish knee injuries?
Acuña tore his right ACL when he leapt for a flyball in right field and came down awkwardly on his leg. He tore his left on seemingly an even more innocent play Sunday, when he planted his foot on the infield dirt after aborting a stolen-base attempt and trying to retreat toward second base.
Ronald Acuña Jr. exits the game due to a non-contact injury on the bases. pic.twitter.com/RHZCJ9ldBe
— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) May 26, 2024
Granted, Acuña was not off to the best of starts, batting .250, down from .337 last season, with only four home runs and a .716 OPS, down from 1.012 a year ago. Defensively, too, he was inconsistent, at times sloppy. A week ago, Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer noted it was the first time Acuña truly had struggled when healthy. The effect on him was jarring.
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“He has a very simple mindset in the batter’s box — that’s part of what makes him good,” Seitzer said. “Making adjustments is a little more difficult when you never had to do that for most of your life.”
Still, Seitzer was confident Acuña would figure it out, sync up his mechanics, and start catching up to fastballs again. Everyone with the Braves had the same expectation. And now the team must attempt to pull off the same feat it did in 2021, when it won the World Series without its biggest star.
Acuña met with Braves reporters, including The Athletic’s David O’Brien, while experiencing that postseason as a spectator, calling it “one of the hardest moments of my career.” His mother would reveal, a year and a half later, just how difficult the injury was for Acuña emotionally. But at the time, he said he was staying “always positive, always strong.”
“If there’s one positive takeaway from it or a blessing in disguise, I would say it’s given me an opportunity to focus on working on parts of my body that I wasn’t necessarily focused on before,” Acuña said. “If there’s a silver lining, that’s it, just the fact that I’ve been able to focus and put some time and effort and energy into working on certain parts of my body that I haven’t really done before.”
The results of that work were not fully apparent when he returned in late April 2022, and did not become truly evident until ’23. Acuña undoubtedly will adopt the same mindset again, knowing what steps he must take, literally and figuratively, to return to MVP form. But that will not make his rehabilitation any less lonely or frustrating. The last thing Ronald Acuña Jr. wanted was to go through this again. Forgive him if he wants to scream.
(Photo: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
Ken Rosenthal is the senior baseball writer for The Athletic who has spent nearly 35 years covering the major leagues. In addition, Ken is a broadcaster and regular contributor to Fox Sports' MLB telecasts. He's also won Emmy Awards in 2015 and 2016 for his TV reporting. Follow Ken on Twitter @Ken_Rosenthal
