Atlanta Braves Could Be In For A Union Headache With Acuna
By W. M. Lawson
The Atlanta Braves are just three days away from their first Spring Training live action against the Mets. The Ronald Acuña question is getting even more interesting.
Like most teams in MLB, the Atlanta Braves, and Braves Nation, enter Spring Training, and the coming regular season, with a quiet optimism. The future of the franchise, found in young minor league talent, will start bubbling to the surface this year, with players like Albies, Gohara, Fried, Soroka, and others getting time to shine with the “big club”. One of those others is Ronald Acuña, the current Number 1 prospect in all of Major League Baseball. His emergence may be even more complicated than usual with that transition.
I am not one to write something based solely on what another has written. But upon happening on this, from cbssports.com, my interest was piqued as a writer, and my ire was inflamed as a fan.
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The long and short of it is that the MLBPA, Major League Baseball Player’s Association, is getting peeved at the resistance of ball clubs to spend big on Free Agents. According to Mr. Axisa, 5 of the top 10 FA have yet to be signed. Based on his reporting, the current collective bargaining agreement, which isn’t up until 2021, is to blame. If you want to get into the weeds with this, it’ll have to be somewhere else.
That said, what grabbed my attention is that the somewhat simple, yet always complicated, decision of whether to bring up a 20-year-old phenom is now even more convoluted. Do you leave the kid at AAA, let him get seasoned, and then call him up? This helps the club long term, no doubt, with both Free Agency concerns later, and player development now.
But if the MLBPA gets involved in this, and tries to use Acuña as way to flex muscle, it can only serve as a distraction. Trust me when I write, there will be plenty of focus on the Braves, and how they perform, without all that noise.
Not to mention what that would mean with Acuña, his development, and his relationship with the Atlanta Braves Front Office.
Who knows if this will have any tangible effect on the Braves’ future star. But it can’t help.
Next: Atlanta Braves: What to Look For in Spring Training
Crazily enough, if Ronald Acuña kills it in Spring Training, which is a good thing for him and the team, it might make sending him to Gwinnett to start the season even more difficult than it already would be for a team in need of power, speed, and a Left Fielder.
Just because of union concerns. The season really is upon us.