Goober Pyle
New member
I thought the highlighted part was interesting. Good job by the hitting coaches to smooth out the flaws.
https://theathletic.com/473883/2018...ting-streak-has-energized-first-place-braves/
By David O'Brien
Braves wunderkind Ronald Acuña plays baseball with boundless energy and enthusiasm but handles interviews rather dutifully, with the bearing of a guy sitting through a movie that’s not good but that he’s waiting for it to get better.
Part of that is probably the language barrier. Most interviews the 20-year-old budding star is asked to do are in English, and Acuña waits as each question is translated to Spanish, then waits again as his answer is translated to English. To his credit, Acuña is available and answers all the questions, and his replies lately have begun to get a little longer.
The requests are becoming an almost daily thing now, because the young star is the hottest hitter in baseball, with two more homers Tuesday night and eight in his past eight games for a resurgent Braves team that has a two-game lead in the National League East.
The exuberance that he shows whether hitting, flying around the bases, making a spectacular catch or celebrating with teammates is usually absent entirely when he’s answering writers’ questions. Which is why it was noticeable to see Acuña perk up when Miguel Cabrera’s name was mentioned by a reporter during an interview Tuesday afternoon.
Specifically, Acuña was asked how it felt to be in the same sentence as his Venezuelan countryman Cabrera, aka “Miggy,” one of the two or three greatest hitters of the past two decades and a player Acuña has been compared to since last season when he was Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year. The comparisons seemed premature at the time but are a bit more appropriate with each passing day as Acuña does things 20-year-olds aren’t supposed to be able to do.
“I’m extremely proud,” Acuña said Tuesday afternoon, through Braves interpreter Franco García. “(Cabrera) has been my favorite player since I was a little kid. I always admired him; even today he’s my favorite player. So to be mentioned with the likes of him is just extremely proud for me.”
Three hours later, Acuña surpassed even the great Cabrera by homering for a fifth consecutive game, leading off with a first-pitch homer in the bottom of the first inning. Then, taking things to an absurd level, he hit a three-run, opposite-field first-pitch homer in the seventh inning to secure a 10-6 win for the Braves, who pushed their lead to two games over the second-place Philadelphia Phillies in the division.
Acuna has hit .358 with 12 homers and 24 RBI in 24 games since being moved to the leadoff spot in the first game after the All-Star break.
“I mean, he’s the best leadoff hitter I’ve ever seen. He’s the best player I’ve ever seen,” said Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte, who was the team’s primary leadoff man before Acuña took over that spot. “I mean, he’s just been unbelievable. Hopefully he’s going to continue to help us in the long run because we just want to go to the playoffs, and he’s a big part of where we are right now.”
Braves manager Brian Snitker, who is 64, said he has never seen anything like this Acuña run in his lifetime.
“Freddie (Freeman) and I are sitting there in the dugout, and we’re looking at each other like, ‘My God, are we really seeing this?’ ” Snitker said. “And the explosions, too, when he hit ’em.”
Atlanta (67-51) is 16 games over .500 for the first time since finishing 96-66 in 2013, the last time it won the division. And Acuña is a big reason the Braves have gone 15-9 since the All-Star break had moved back to first place.
The win Tuesday marked the third consecutive game in which he led off with a homer in a two-day span against Miami and the second in a row on the first pitch. Charlie Culberson followed him by homering on the next pitch, giving the Braves a 2-0 lead after the first two pitches thrown by Marlins right-hander Trevor Richards.
“He’s been a spark plug, and he’s the most exciting player that I’ve seen right now; he’s great,” Culberson said. “I kind of surprised myself a little bit (on the home run). I was just thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to follow this up? This happened again?’ Everything’s just so easy for Ronald, it puts a smile on everyone else’s face, to see the excitement that he brings to the team and the fans.”
The Braves picked up their fourth straight win despite a rough start for Anibal Sánchez, who gave up seven hits and five runs (four earned) in five innings.
After Dansby Swanson’s two-out single gave the Braves a 7-6 lead in the seventh, Ozzie Albies hit a pinch-hit single to put runners on the corners before Acuña hit yet another first-pitch homer, this one off left-hander Adam Conley. It was his first multi-homer game.
Acuña was asked if he was surprised to continue getting such hittable first pitches.
“I’m not surprised that they’re throwing the pitches they’re throwing,” he said. “The pitchers are trying to get ahead in the count, and they’re trying to do their thing. I think that’s the trend that most guys do. I think the surprise is kind of the results that have come from it. I would never expect anything like that.”
He said he has never been this hot at the plate. At any level.
“You definitely show up (at the ballpark) with a lot of confidence,” he said, “and it definitely feels good to show up and be able to play.”
Acuña’s binge has been nothing short of remarkable. He’s 16-for-34 (.471) with eight home runs and 15 RBI during an eight-game hitting streak and has hit at least one homer in seven of those games.
“He’s locked in,” Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer said Tuesday afternoon. “He’s seeing the ball good; he’s not chasing. He’s staying within himself and these balls are jumping out of the park. It’s beautiful because he’s not trying to hit them out. He’s just trying to be on time and staying within himself. That’s how it goes when you get hot — everything’s bigger and slower. He’s in a good place.
“We just flip (him balls to hit in the cage) and don’t talk too much, because you just ride this tidal wave as long as you can.”
In a doubleheader sweep of Miami on Monday, Acuña became the fourth major leaguer in history — and the first NL player — to lead off with home runs in both games of a doubleheader. He’s now the youngest to do that, too. And he matched Willie Mays for the most consecutive games (five) with a home run by a leadoff hitter.
When he went deep again on the first pitch Tuesday, Acuña became the first player to lead off three consecutive games with home runs since Baltimore’s Brady Anderson did it in a major-league record four straight games in 1996 — a 50-homer season for a player who never hit half as many in any of his other 14 major league seasons.
Asked if he has ever seen a hitter as hot as Acuña, Culberson said, “Honestly, I don’t think so. … I’ve played against (Mike) Trout some at spring training; he’s probably the best player I’ve played against. But Ronald’s doing some pretty amazing things right now. Hopefully he can keep it going, but he’s playing with some high intensity and having fun out there.”
Before Monday, Cabrera was the only player younger than 21 to homer in four consecutive games. Cabrera did it in his second season with the Marlins in 2004, when he hit five homers in a four-game stretch in April, four days before turning 21. Acuña has the under-21 record now with five consecutive games with a homer — he has six in that five-game stretch — and won’t turn 21 until Dec. 18.
“It’s a joy to watch him play,” said Inciarte, whose locker is in the same corner of the clubhouse as Acuña’s. “I talk to him all the time, because he’s so special, and I just tell him, ‘Man, God blessed you with this ability, so stay humble and keep doing what you’re doing. Because you’re going to make a lot of people happy for a long time. And just keep working.’
“I tell him, ‘It’s a joy to watch you play.’ And he’s just having fun. You see him smiling. It’s contagious what he’s doing. His energy, all the time.”
Acuña matched the franchise record with his five-game homer streak, last accomplished by Brian McCann in 2006. Seven other Braves have done it, including the two greatest hitters in the franchise’s Atlanta era, Hank Aaron in 1966 and Chipper Jones in 2004. The others: Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby (1928), Eddie Miller (1940), Joe Adcock (1956), Jeff Burroughs (1977) and Ozzie Virgil Jr. (1987).
Most of those players were considerably older and far more experienced than Acuña when they pulled off the feat. He has played 67 games — he debuted April 25 and missed much of June with knee and back injuries — and Acuña already has 19 home runs and 43 RBI to go with a .288 batting average, .346 on-base percentage and .576 slugging percentage.
He has just one fewer homer than Freeman, who hit his 20th on Tuesday and his eighth in 14 games against Miami. The Braves are 11-3 against the Marlins and still have five games left against them.
The sizzling stretch of hitting has put Acuña squarely in contention for NL Rookie of the Year. As recently as a week ago Washington Nationals slugger Juan Soto was the overwhelming favorite to win the award. That was before Acuña began to make hitting a baseball look easy.
Said one Marlins coach before Tuesday’s game, “He’s a man among boys.”
He’s suddenly producing at such a crazy pace, it’s easy to forget Acuña struggled for significant stretches earlier in the season. He hit .196 with one homer in a 14-game stretch through May 25. In his past 10 games before the break, he hit .147 with one RBI and a .400 OPS.
Nevertheless, Snitker decided at the All-Star break that he would switch Acuña to the leadoff spot where Inciarte had slumped most of the first half and where Albies hadn’t been nearly as productive as he had been batting second.
“You’ve got speed, you’ve got power,” Snitker said of batting Acuña leadoff. “You’ve got a guy who can go from first to third, he can steal a base, he scores from first on doubles — a guy that can do a lot of things when you put him put him up there. And it’s just been amazing how he’s been a different guy. I mean, just the whole approach.
“He brings a lot to the game. He’s a middle-of-the-order bat probably. But in the right situation, man it’s nice to have a guy like that (batting leadoff).”
While Snitker was deciding to move him to the leadoff spot, Seitzer was doing research that showed Acuña’s struggles in the first half were mostly with fastballs — he was either trying to do too much, swinging and missing them with less than two strikes, or he was too late on two-strike fastballs because he was determined not to chase off-speed pitches in those counts.
Seitzer shared the information with Acuña in Washington, D.C., before early batting practice prior to the first game after the All-Star break, and explained that they need to get him “on time” for the fastball. “To stay short and stay within yourself,” is how Seitzer put it to him.
They began an exercise that Seitzer calls his Throttle Drill, wherein a hitter in the batting cage swings at different levels of effort — 50 percent, 30 percent, 70 percent, etc., — while holding onto the bat with both hands as he finishes each swing. It’s designed to improve the hitter’s bat control, making him trust his hands and maintain a strong base with his legs.
Whether it was the move to the leadoff spot or the Throttle Drill or a little of both combined with Acuña’s preternatural talent, the rookie had three hits including a double and a home run in the first game after the break. He hasn’t slowed down since.
“He struggled for quite a while (before the break),” Seitzer said. “He wasn’t exactly on fire before he got hurt, and he really wasn’t on fire after he came back. It was hard for me because there were issues that I saw with his swing, but he was doing well (earlier) so you can’t change anything until they start to do bad. Then they’ve got to do bad for a while, let the numbers kind of take a hit before (you make adjustments).
“But we would give him a little nugget here and there, and he’s been awesome about really trying to incorporate everything that we’ve said.”
Asked if Acuña was a coachable sort, Seitzer didn’t hesitate, “Very coachable. Extremely coachable. But, I mean, this kid has been playing-in-the-backyard mentality his whole career, to where he hadn’t really had to focus too much on mechanics. It’s grab the bat, get ready and swing, and special things happen.
“I love where he’s at with his setup now, his hand position. He’s a little wider in his base, he’s in his legs, where (before) when he was kind of in a narrow stance and slightly open, and his hands were kind of by his face, and then the big leg kick and the windup — I knew it was a matter of time before that wasn’t going to work.”
Because Acuña used that stance while putting up impressive statistics in spring training and right after being called up, Seitzer and assistant hitting coach Jose Castro didn’t ask him to make wholesale changes initially. And when they did start to make adjustments, the coaches made sure that Acuña understood the reasoning and was comfortable each step of the way.
The big leg kick is no more, and he stopped all the excessive hand movement he used to have holding the bat in his stance.
“Oh yeah, it’s gone,” Seitzer said. “I mean, he’s in an athletic position with his legs. I just told him, ‘I just want you to set up different. You can do everything the same way (with your swing), just get in this position to set up.’ And then we did the drill to kind of get the tension out, feel the hands working a little bit more.”
Lately he has looked like a hitter in full, but the Braves believe he has only scratched the surface of his immense potential.
Acuña was asked before the game Tuesday if he thought back in spring training that he was capable of this level of performance so soon.
“With God’s help and the ability to stay healthy, who knows what you’re capable of out there?” he said. “I don’t think any of us are fully aware of our abilities and what we’re able to do.”
https://theathletic.com/473883/2018...ting-streak-has-energized-first-place-braves/
By David O'Brien
Braves wunderkind Ronald Acuña plays baseball with boundless energy and enthusiasm but handles interviews rather dutifully, with the bearing of a guy sitting through a movie that’s not good but that he’s waiting for it to get better.
Part of that is probably the language barrier. Most interviews the 20-year-old budding star is asked to do are in English, and Acuña waits as each question is translated to Spanish, then waits again as his answer is translated to English. To his credit, Acuña is available and answers all the questions, and his replies lately have begun to get a little longer.
The requests are becoming an almost daily thing now, because the young star is the hottest hitter in baseball, with two more homers Tuesday night and eight in his past eight games for a resurgent Braves team that has a two-game lead in the National League East.
The exuberance that he shows whether hitting, flying around the bases, making a spectacular catch or celebrating with teammates is usually absent entirely when he’s answering writers’ questions. Which is why it was noticeable to see Acuña perk up when Miguel Cabrera’s name was mentioned by a reporter during an interview Tuesday afternoon.
Specifically, Acuña was asked how it felt to be in the same sentence as his Venezuelan countryman Cabrera, aka “Miggy,” one of the two or three greatest hitters of the past two decades and a player Acuña has been compared to since last season when he was Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year. The comparisons seemed premature at the time but are a bit more appropriate with each passing day as Acuña does things 20-year-olds aren’t supposed to be able to do.
“I’m extremely proud,” Acuña said Tuesday afternoon, through Braves interpreter Franco García. “(Cabrera) has been my favorite player since I was a little kid. I always admired him; even today he’s my favorite player. So to be mentioned with the likes of him is just extremely proud for me.”
Three hours later, Acuña surpassed even the great Cabrera by homering for a fifth consecutive game, leading off with a first-pitch homer in the bottom of the first inning. Then, taking things to an absurd level, he hit a three-run, opposite-field first-pitch homer in the seventh inning to secure a 10-6 win for the Braves, who pushed their lead to two games over the second-place Philadelphia Phillies in the division.
Acuna has hit .358 with 12 homers and 24 RBI in 24 games since being moved to the leadoff spot in the first game after the All-Star break.
“I mean, he’s the best leadoff hitter I’ve ever seen. He’s the best player I’ve ever seen,” said Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte, who was the team’s primary leadoff man before Acuña took over that spot. “I mean, he’s just been unbelievable. Hopefully he’s going to continue to help us in the long run because we just want to go to the playoffs, and he’s a big part of where we are right now.”
Braves manager Brian Snitker, who is 64, said he has never seen anything like this Acuña run in his lifetime.
“Freddie (Freeman) and I are sitting there in the dugout, and we’re looking at each other like, ‘My God, are we really seeing this?’ ” Snitker said. “And the explosions, too, when he hit ’em.”
Atlanta (67-51) is 16 games over .500 for the first time since finishing 96-66 in 2013, the last time it won the division. And Acuña is a big reason the Braves have gone 15-9 since the All-Star break had moved back to first place.
The win Tuesday marked the third consecutive game in which he led off with a homer in a two-day span against Miami and the second in a row on the first pitch. Charlie Culberson followed him by homering on the next pitch, giving the Braves a 2-0 lead after the first two pitches thrown by Marlins right-hander Trevor Richards.
“He’s been a spark plug, and he’s the most exciting player that I’ve seen right now; he’s great,” Culberson said. “I kind of surprised myself a little bit (on the home run). I was just thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to follow this up? This happened again?’ Everything’s just so easy for Ronald, it puts a smile on everyone else’s face, to see the excitement that he brings to the team and the fans.”
The Braves picked up their fourth straight win despite a rough start for Anibal Sánchez, who gave up seven hits and five runs (four earned) in five innings.
After Dansby Swanson’s two-out single gave the Braves a 7-6 lead in the seventh, Ozzie Albies hit a pinch-hit single to put runners on the corners before Acuña hit yet another first-pitch homer, this one off left-hander Adam Conley. It was his first multi-homer game.
Acuña was asked if he was surprised to continue getting such hittable first pitches.
“I’m not surprised that they’re throwing the pitches they’re throwing,” he said. “The pitchers are trying to get ahead in the count, and they’re trying to do their thing. I think that’s the trend that most guys do. I think the surprise is kind of the results that have come from it. I would never expect anything like that.”
He said he has never been this hot at the plate. At any level.
“You definitely show up (at the ballpark) with a lot of confidence,” he said, “and it definitely feels good to show up and be able to play.”
Acuña’s binge has been nothing short of remarkable. He’s 16-for-34 (.471) with eight home runs and 15 RBI during an eight-game hitting streak and has hit at least one homer in seven of those games.
“He’s locked in,” Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer said Tuesday afternoon. “He’s seeing the ball good; he’s not chasing. He’s staying within himself and these balls are jumping out of the park. It’s beautiful because he’s not trying to hit them out. He’s just trying to be on time and staying within himself. That’s how it goes when you get hot — everything’s bigger and slower. He’s in a good place.
“We just flip (him balls to hit in the cage) and don’t talk too much, because you just ride this tidal wave as long as you can.”
In a doubleheader sweep of Miami on Monday, Acuña became the fourth major leaguer in history — and the first NL player — to lead off with home runs in both games of a doubleheader. He’s now the youngest to do that, too. And he matched Willie Mays for the most consecutive games (five) with a home run by a leadoff hitter.
When he went deep again on the first pitch Tuesday, Acuña became the first player to lead off three consecutive games with home runs since Baltimore’s Brady Anderson did it in a major-league record four straight games in 1996 — a 50-homer season for a player who never hit half as many in any of his other 14 major league seasons.
Asked if he has ever seen a hitter as hot as Acuña, Culberson said, “Honestly, I don’t think so. … I’ve played against (Mike) Trout some at spring training; he’s probably the best player I’ve played against. But Ronald’s doing some pretty amazing things right now. Hopefully he can keep it going, but he’s playing with some high intensity and having fun out there.”
Before Monday, Cabrera was the only player younger than 21 to homer in four consecutive games. Cabrera did it in his second season with the Marlins in 2004, when he hit five homers in a four-game stretch in April, four days before turning 21. Acuña has the under-21 record now with five consecutive games with a homer — he has six in that five-game stretch — and won’t turn 21 until Dec. 18.
“It’s a joy to watch him play,” said Inciarte, whose locker is in the same corner of the clubhouse as Acuña’s. “I talk to him all the time, because he’s so special, and I just tell him, ‘Man, God blessed you with this ability, so stay humble and keep doing what you’re doing. Because you’re going to make a lot of people happy for a long time. And just keep working.’
“I tell him, ‘It’s a joy to watch you play.’ And he’s just having fun. You see him smiling. It’s contagious what he’s doing. His energy, all the time.”
Acuña matched the franchise record with his five-game homer streak, last accomplished by Brian McCann in 2006. Seven other Braves have done it, including the two greatest hitters in the franchise’s Atlanta era, Hank Aaron in 1966 and Chipper Jones in 2004. The others: Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby (1928), Eddie Miller (1940), Joe Adcock (1956), Jeff Burroughs (1977) and Ozzie Virgil Jr. (1987).
Most of those players were considerably older and far more experienced than Acuña when they pulled off the feat. He has played 67 games — he debuted April 25 and missed much of June with knee and back injuries — and Acuña already has 19 home runs and 43 RBI to go with a .288 batting average, .346 on-base percentage and .576 slugging percentage.
He has just one fewer homer than Freeman, who hit his 20th on Tuesday and his eighth in 14 games against Miami. The Braves are 11-3 against the Marlins and still have five games left against them.
The sizzling stretch of hitting has put Acuña squarely in contention for NL Rookie of the Year. As recently as a week ago Washington Nationals slugger Juan Soto was the overwhelming favorite to win the award. That was before Acuña began to make hitting a baseball look easy.
Said one Marlins coach before Tuesday’s game, “He’s a man among boys.”
He’s suddenly producing at such a crazy pace, it’s easy to forget Acuña struggled for significant stretches earlier in the season. He hit .196 with one homer in a 14-game stretch through May 25. In his past 10 games before the break, he hit .147 with one RBI and a .400 OPS.
Nevertheless, Snitker decided at the All-Star break that he would switch Acuña to the leadoff spot where Inciarte had slumped most of the first half and where Albies hadn’t been nearly as productive as he had been batting second.
“You’ve got speed, you’ve got power,” Snitker said of batting Acuña leadoff. “You’ve got a guy who can go from first to third, he can steal a base, he scores from first on doubles — a guy that can do a lot of things when you put him put him up there. And it’s just been amazing how he’s been a different guy. I mean, just the whole approach.
“He brings a lot to the game. He’s a middle-of-the-order bat probably. But in the right situation, man it’s nice to have a guy like that (batting leadoff).”
While Snitker was deciding to move him to the leadoff spot, Seitzer was doing research that showed Acuña’s struggles in the first half were mostly with fastballs — he was either trying to do too much, swinging and missing them with less than two strikes, or he was too late on two-strike fastballs because he was determined not to chase off-speed pitches in those counts.
Seitzer shared the information with Acuña in Washington, D.C., before early batting practice prior to the first game after the All-Star break, and explained that they need to get him “on time” for the fastball. “To stay short and stay within yourself,” is how Seitzer put it to him.
They began an exercise that Seitzer calls his Throttle Drill, wherein a hitter in the batting cage swings at different levels of effort — 50 percent, 30 percent, 70 percent, etc., — while holding onto the bat with both hands as he finishes each swing. It’s designed to improve the hitter’s bat control, making him trust his hands and maintain a strong base with his legs.
Whether it was the move to the leadoff spot or the Throttle Drill or a little of both combined with Acuña’s preternatural talent, the rookie had three hits including a double and a home run in the first game after the break. He hasn’t slowed down since.
“He struggled for quite a while (before the break),” Seitzer said. “He wasn’t exactly on fire before he got hurt, and he really wasn’t on fire after he came back. It was hard for me because there were issues that I saw with his swing, but he was doing well (earlier) so you can’t change anything until they start to do bad. Then they’ve got to do bad for a while, let the numbers kind of take a hit before (you make adjustments).
“But we would give him a little nugget here and there, and he’s been awesome about really trying to incorporate everything that we’ve said.”
Asked if Acuña was a coachable sort, Seitzer didn’t hesitate, “Very coachable. Extremely coachable. But, I mean, this kid has been playing-in-the-backyard mentality his whole career, to where he hadn’t really had to focus too much on mechanics. It’s grab the bat, get ready and swing, and special things happen.
“I love where he’s at with his setup now, his hand position. He’s a little wider in his base, he’s in his legs, where (before) when he was kind of in a narrow stance and slightly open, and his hands were kind of by his face, and then the big leg kick and the windup — I knew it was a matter of time before that wasn’t going to work.”
Because Acuña used that stance while putting up impressive statistics in spring training and right after being called up, Seitzer and assistant hitting coach Jose Castro didn’t ask him to make wholesale changes initially. And when they did start to make adjustments, the coaches made sure that Acuña understood the reasoning and was comfortable each step of the way.
The big leg kick is no more, and he stopped all the excessive hand movement he used to have holding the bat in his stance.
“Oh yeah, it’s gone,” Seitzer said. “I mean, he’s in an athletic position with his legs. I just told him, ‘I just want you to set up different. You can do everything the same way (with your swing), just get in this position to set up.’ And then we did the drill to kind of get the tension out, feel the hands working a little bit more.”
Lately he has looked like a hitter in full, but the Braves believe he has only scratched the surface of his immense potential.
Acuña was asked before the game Tuesday if he thought back in spring training that he was capable of this level of performance so soon.
“With God’s help and the ability to stay healthy, who knows what you’re capable of out there?” he said. “I don’t think any of us are fully aware of our abilities and what we’re able to do.”
