This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. MLB.com digital content fellow Perla Paredes wrote this edition. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
MIAMI -- Ronald Acuña Jr.'s joy on game day is impossible to ignore.
Inside the clubhouse, he lounges on the couch with a smile on his face and his legs stretched out. He laughs at videos on his phone and jokes around with teammates, usually with songs from his favorite artist, Bad Bunny, playing in the background.
Minutes later, he is in the batting cage talking to his teammates in between swings, moving from one conversation to another. Nothing about him feels tense or guarded.
Once the game begins, that same energy follows.
“He’s like a little kid at recess playing in a big league game,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “He’s pretty unflappable as it relates to the pressure of this game, this business.”
On Wednesday at loanDepot park, Acuña returned to right field for the first time since May 2 after spending roughly two weeks on the injured list with a left hamstring strain. The day before, he was back in his usual leadoff spot as the designated hitter -- doubling, walking twice and scoring three runs.
“It was great to have Ronald back. There's excitement when he's in the game. He just brings it because he's capable of doing things you may have never seen before,” Weiss said. “Him at the top of the lineup is a game-changer for us. We had a great hitter in [Drake Baldwin], probably out of character at the top of the lineup, but he's such a good hitter, I put him there, but Ronald in the top of our lineup just changes things.”
The Braves plan to ease Acuña back into everyday action carefully. Atlanta expects to continue monitoring him on a day-to-day basis, mixing in starts at designated hitter, possible off-days and appearances off the bench, depending on how his body responds.
With Baldwin sidelined with a Grade 1 oblique strain, Acuña could see additional time at designated hitter, especially against left-handed starters.
“[Acuña is] doing well, checking with the medical staff, and they've run him through the gauntlet out here for several days now, so he's passed all the tests,” Weiss said.
The time away may have helped Acuña more than he expected.
“I feel way better than I did before I got injured because I was fatigued and the routine was stressing me out a little bit,” Acuña said in Spanish. “I think all baseball players understand that, and it's part of this game. I didn’t want to get injured, but the rest favored me a lot.”
The injury also gave Acuña another chance to reflect on how much he has changed throughout his career.
Earlier in his career, Acuña said he was simply a young player trying to establish himself in the Major Leagues. But battling injuries, including the ACL tear he suffered in Miami in 2021, helped reshape his perspective on life and the sport.
“I have matured a lot as a baseball player and as a person,” Acuña told El Extra Base’s Daniel Alvarez-Montes. “I think that was part of the little experience that I had. I don’t judge myself because I was just a kid with a lot of dreams, trying to consolidate here in the Major Leagues. That might be why a lot of people thought of me as arrogant, but I don’t judge them because it all came with the little experience that I had, and now I am a more mature person with empathy.”