The Winter's Opening Advice on Ronald Acuña Jr. Is to Do Nothing

In April 2019 the Braves announced that they had agreed with Ronald Acuña Jr. on "an eight-year contract extension through 2026 worth $100 million, with club options for the 2027 and 2028 seasons."

Eight years and $100 million is the part that got repeated. The clause on the end is the part that matters now.

Atlanta went 94-68 and won the National League East, took a Wild Card series from Philadelphia at Truist Park, then lost the Division Series to Los Angeles three games to one on October 7. Milwaukee has since beaten Tampa Bay in five games for the first title in that franchise's history.

The season formally ends Saturday, the offseason opens Sunday, and the recommendations are already in.

What the advice says

ESPN's offseason-questions package does not open its Atlanta section with Acuña. David Schoenfield names shortstop as the club's biggest priority. The extension question is second, and his answer is this: "The easiest and perhaps wisest thing to do is just to let those contracts play out."

Ken Rosenthal got there seven weeks earlier, from the other direction. Answering a listener question on his show Fair Territory on September 8, three weeks before Atlanta played a postseason game, he said: "And if you're the Braves, and you've got him on a cheap deal, which they do for the next two years, why would you do anything when his knees have been a problem for him?" He added that he expected no extension and did expect free agency in two years.

Underneath that, an aggregator is building hypothetical trade packages — the one argument for subtraction anywhere in the day's reading, and the one with no reporting in it. Take it out and what remains is a recommendation to do nothing, arrived at twice, seven weeks apart. ESPN prices the option. Neither read prices the decision.

The price

ESPN has the 2027 figure: "Acuña has two team options left ... The Braves will pick up the 2027 options — $17 million for Acuña and $7 million for Albies."

MLB Trade Rumors reported in May that the 2027 option carries a $10 million buyout. That is one outlet's number rather than the club's, and the arithmetic hangs on it: exercising costs $17 million, declining costs the $10 million buyout, so the decision Atlanta is actually making is worth about $7 million.

Atlanta holds both options. Not Acuña — the club. That is why this is an extension conversation instead of a countdown, and most of the reason for the advice.

The number nobody has cited

Acuña's 2026 postseason was seven games, 3-for-24, no home runs, no runs driven in, five walks, three stolen bases. That line has been read aloud plenty this month.

Here is the one that has not: the zeros are not new. Across 2022, 2023 and 2026 he has played 15 games, taken 53 at-bats and collected 10 hits, with no home runs and no runs driven in. His last postseason home run and his last postseason run batted in both came in 2020, after a 60-game pandemic season.

Three postseasons, 53 at-bats, a .189 average, and not a home run or a run driven in among them.

That is not why Atlanta lost the Division Series. I wrote three weeks ago that the number Atlanta blamed for its season was one Los Angeles posted too in the same four games. One hitter did not cost that series. But a span is not a series, and three of them in a row is the kind of thing a club holding an option is paid to notice.

Both at once

The other half is just as true. In 2023 Acuña played 159 games, hit .337 with 41 home runs, stole 73 bases and posted a 1.012 OPS. That season is what the $100 million bought, and why the word "cheap" keeps attaching itself to this contract.

Since then: 49 games, 95, then 107 this year — 251 across three calendars, a season and a half of baseball. (Tilt has published 107; ESPN's figure is lower.) He hit .255/.345/.451 with 20 home runs for a .796 OPS, and of his five seasons of 100 games or more only 2022's .764 is lower. He is 28, and he turns 29 in December.

Atlanta has not made a trade or signed a major-league free agent since elimination. The 21 transactions it has filed in the three weeks since are activations off the postseason roster, two contract selections out of Gwinnett and minor-league paperwork — the housekeeping has been busy — and with the offseason opening Sunday, the absence of a major-league addition is a calendar more than a verdict.

What the option buys is a year of not deciding. $17 million, and roughly $7 million once the buyout is counted, to keep the question open rather than answer it — on a player Rosenthal calls top-five in the game at his best, who has played a season and a half since the last time he was. The advice is to wait, and it is probably right. It is still worth naming what Atlanta would be buying, because it is not a season of Ronald Acuña Jr. It is another year before anyone finds out.