The Athletic https://theathletic.com/473370/2018/...-braves-scout/
By Jeff Schultz
To get to La Sabana, the remote fishing village that sits on Venezuela’s north coast, one can drive a small car on a narrow mountain road from La Guaira to the west. Or pick another tiny hamlet to the east. Doesn’t matter. All options are going to seem like the slowest distance between two points.
“You used to have to drive an off-road car or a 4-by-4,” Rolando Petit said. “It’s better now. But you still can’t get there without going through mountains, and you’re driving 20 to 25 miles per hour. Unless there’s mudslides. Then you can’t get there at all.”
This is the town that gave us Ronald Acuña. The Braves outfielder is producing at illogical levels for a 20-year-old rookie, who two years ago was listed as the organization’s 18th best prospect before he began climbing stairs five steps at a time. Acuña became only the fourth player in major league history to hit leadoff homers in both games of a doubleheader Monday. Despite starting the season in the minors and missing 27 games with a sprained knee and bruised back, Acuña’s first 67 games produced 19 homers and 43 RBI (full season projections: 46 and 104).
“Nobody can tell you that they knew he was going to do this,” Petit said. “Nobody.”
Petit would know. He’s the pro scout who first laid eyes on Acuña as a 14-year-old on La Sabana’s lone baseball field, watching him play games against 18-to-25-year-olds and maybe a couple in their 40s.
The kid had no fear. He had the athleticism and uncommon bat control for somebody so young. He also had “that freakin’ smile that says, ‘You know what? This is my life,’ ” Petit said.
Today, the man who delivered Acuña to the Braves is out of a job. How is this possible?
Petit was hired as a Braves scout in 1991 and worked for the next 27 years. He not only signed Acuña, he was either directly responsible or part of a Latin American scouting group responsible for the Braves’ signings of Ozzie Albies, Elvis Andrus, Martin Prado, Julio Teheran, Gregor Blanco, Jose Peraza and others.
At a time when Acuña and Albies are doing unfathomable things for a Braves team that stunningly sits in first place in the National League East in mid-August, Petit is home and unemployed in the Miami area. The same Braves organization that signed him as a player and entrusted him to set up their Venezuelan scouting headquarters, swept him out in December as part of a front-office house cleaning.
Petit appeared to have little, if anything, to do with the international signing scandal that led to the ostracizing and exits of former general manager John Coppolella and president of baseball operations John Hart.
But …
“It’s like you say in America, ‘I wasn’t driving that bus. But I was one of the passengers on that bus,’ ” he said.
Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos declined to comment on Petit. But it would appear, either because of a directive from Major League Baseball or simple optics, Anthopoulos decided the entire international scouting staff needed to go.
“It was an organizational decision, and so you have to respect that, even if you don’t like it,” Petit said. “But I still pull for the team. Those are my boys over there.”
There was some irony to Petit signing Acuña. Petit attempted to sign the player’s father, Ronald Acuña Sr., nearly two decades earlier. So he was familiar with the family dynamics. The father played baseball. The uncles played baseball. Everybody in the family was tall and athletic.
“Good gene pool,” Petit said.
The younger Acuña said Tuesday his family’s familiarity with Petit didn’t have an impact on his decision to sign with the Braves. The $100,000 signing bonus far exceeded what any other team offered (no doubt leaving every other team miserable these days).
But growing up in a town of a few thousand people where there’s little to do beyond fish, grow plantains and play baseball had a pronounced impact on Acuña’s development, the player said.
He’s not intimidated in the majors as a 20-year-old because he wasn’t even intimidated as a 14-year-old playing against men.
“I never felt the pressure from playing with anybody older than myself,” Acuña said through an interpreter. “It’s the same baseball. Ever since I jumped into professional baseball, it’s been the same thing. Just try to do your own thing.
“That was kind of the mentality and the mind frame instilled in me by father. He played and knows the game of baseball, and he instilled the same thing in me.”
In 23 games since Braves manager Brian Snitker moved him to the leadoff role, Acuña is hitting .358 with 12 homers, 24 RBI, 25 runs and a 1.211 OPS since. He’s also the youngest player in history to homer in five straight games and has led off the past three games with home runs. The major league record for consecutive games with a leadoff homer is four in 1996 by the steroid cartoon Brady Anderson, who jumped from 16 home runs in 1995 to 50 that season.
He also climbed the center field wall in Washington to rob a home run from Matt Adams … and hit a home run in the same inning.
“I just signed him. The rest is his story,” Petit said. “You scout players, you tell yourself you like what you see and you convince yourself to try to sign him. You think, ‘This is what he could do in the future.’ But did I think he would do what he’s doing right now? Nobody could know. Nobody could say he would be that good.”
There isn’t much to La Sabana. The coast. The farmland. The plaza. The baseball field.
Petit became familiar with the village because he played there with one of Acuña’s uncles. He soon realized it was fertile scouting territory. Alcides Escobar and Kelvim Escobar are among the baseball graduates. Now there’s Acuña. The village is worth the drive.
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