2024 was another lost season for Ronald Acuña Jr. On May 26th, he pivoted to return to second base on an attempted pickoff throw in the top of the 1st and blew out his left ACL. The good news is that he is now out of ACLs to blow. The bad news is that he really took a year and a half to recover from the last one. I’m not really worried about that – he is, I think, more mature than he was in 2022 and tried to hard to ignore the pain and ended up putting together a year not close to his potential. He is making the right noises now, saying “I’m just going to be a little more cautious and careful with it. If the team and the doctors tell me I’m ready to go and I go out there and I don’t feel good, or something’s bothering me, then I will say something.” Experience is a great teacher.
Am I sure that Ronald has learned his lesson? Of course not. But he will learn, or he will remind me of this paraphrase of Fitzgerald:
“He was a careless person, Ronald – he smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into his money or his vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept him together, and let other people clean up the mess he had made.”
I choose instead to think he has learned his lesson.
Ronald Acuña Jr. is a great baseball player. But so was Eric Davis. And Eric Davis had a great career which was probably about half of the career he could have had were it not for the injuries, Eric Davis is not in the Hall of Fame. Indeed, Eric Davis only received 3 votes in his first and only Hall of Fame ballot in 2007. But Eric Davis was every bit as good as Ronald Acuña Jr. Compare their records through their first seven seasons (Strawberry comes later):
This comparison takes Davis through his 1990 season, after which the injuries really start to pile up. He played for another 11 years, but only managed one more 2 WAR season, a 3.1 WAR season in 1996 after taking a year off with colon cancer. Was Davis unlucky, unwise with his body, lacking the advanced recovery techniques to be developed over the next 30 years, or did he just have immense talent packed into a body that couldn’t cope with the ordinary stresses of baseball? I don’t know, but even if we could answer those questions, it’s hard to figure out how the answer might apply to Acuña.
There is of course no reason Acuña’s career has to be anything like Eric Davis’, no matter how similar their first seven seasons are. Currently, his top 10 comps though age 26 include Hall of Famer Duke Snider, will-be Hall of Famer Mookie Betts and asterisked non-Hall of Famer Barry Bonds. His closest comp is another non Hall of Famer, Darryl Strawberry, but I think Strawberry’s issues are very different. Strawberry, injury-free through his first seven seasons, was a better player than either Acuña or Davis. (I want to be clear, by better player, I simply mean that his ability to stay on the field at roughly the level of production of the other two made his overall numbers much better. The three of them, while playing, were of roughly equal talent and I think you can squint and call Acuña the best of the three, though it’s close.) Of course drugs weren’t Strawberry’s only problems, he also lost a season to back surgery and, amazingly, also came back from colon cancer.
The big question going into 2025 is whether Acuña ought to start slowly. This is based on the general understanding that he came back too fast in 2022. I think I worry about that less than most of you, because I think he will take better care of himself. Whether that results in a slower return or not is still up the air as far as I’m concerned. In any case, AA will need some sort of insurance right fielder to start the season. Including Acuña, I expect the Braves to break camp with five outfielders. Barring some AA magic, three will be Harris, Laureano, and Kelenic and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the 323rd return of Duvall as the fourth.
Am I hopeful for Acuña, both next year and for the rest of his career? Damn straight I am. But just as this year has dealt me a lesson in the preciousness of life, the preciousness of useful baseball talent is contingent on all sorts of things that history provides useful reminders that nothing is guaranteed. There is still plenty of time for Ronald Acuña Jr. to be one of the greatest players in MLB history. He is still signed for four more years in Atlanta and we are very lucky to have him. He deserves an Atlanta WS ring as an active player.
Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate the optimism as it feels sorely needed this offseason.
I didn’t get to see Davis in his prime. He seems like a transcendent talent, but photos of him make him look uncomfortably lanky and thin, like Marcus Camby or Juan Cruz. I can certainly hope that Acuña’s body will hold up better, even if he loses his footspeed, like Mickey Mantle and Chipper Jones after their terrible leg injuries.
But if he hits like those guys, I guess that’d still be alright.
Strawberry was also lanky and thin in his prime, but so was Ted Williams. Lanky and thin doesn’t mean fragile (but note Cody Bellinger.) Are there body types that hold up better? Mike Trout is neither lanky nor thin, and he’s going into the Hall of Fame, but he’s had a lot of trouble staying on the field the last five years or so — he just wrote his resume in the phase that Ronald should have been writing his. Babe Ruth never tore an ACL. I’m just not sure there’s any great way to go from body type to longevity — though it is indubitably true, as Mac pointed out, that Melky is, and always will be, Fat
Mike Trout played 139 games when he was 20; Davis never played 139 games in a single season.
Trout’s body has broken down in his 30s, like both Ken Griffey’s and Andruw Jones’s, but all three were extraordinarily durable in their 20s. (So was Strawberry, for that matter.)
I agree with you that it’s impossible to generalize health from body type. But Ronald is certainly built differently than Davis was, and I can only hope his body will hold up better after this second surgery.