Last Night, Ronald Acuna Jr. Broke Statcast with a 121.2 MPH Home Run
People say that hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in sports. Those people are correct. Putting a ball in play is difficult. Hitting a home run is very hard. Hitting a ball at 121 mph is unfathomable.
Ronald Acuna Jr. is so fucking good, dude. It’s not even fair how good a guy like that is. Miguel Cabrera has basically broken every record there is for a Venezuelan-born ballplayer. He was recently asked which Venezuelan-born player is going to break all his records. Without hesitation, he said Ronald Acuña, Jr.
It’s complete insanity that either Mookie Betts or Ronald Acuña Jr. won’t win the National League MVP this year. Both guys are deserving of it. Acuña currently leads the league in plate appearances, runs scored, hits, stolen bases, on-base percentage, and total bases. The fact that he isn’t running away with the MVP award is a testament to how amazing and historic this MVP race is. 63 stolen bases. Jesus Christ.
Somebody has to finish with the best record in baseball every year, but not all best teams are created equal. The 2023 Atlanta Braves are approaching that area where if they don’t win the World Series this year, they will regret it forever. It won’t be the end of the world. They won a world championship in 2021, but this is different. 2021 was a magical postseason run. This is a magical team. If they finish the job, this team will go down as one of the most stacked rosters ever assembled. I don’t believe that’s an exaggeration. They’re not going anywhere. It feels like they have half the team locked up for the next decade, but I don’t know if they ever get the kind of years they’ve gotten from seemingly every position player again.
Do you want to know what's scary? Ronald Acuna Jr. is 25 years old. It feels like he's been around forever. It's not out of the realm of possibility to think that he has ten more prime years left on him. Even if he doesn't win the MVP this season, he's going to one day. It feels inevitable. He's having one of the greatest individual seasons in Atlanta Braves history, and we're talking about an organization that employed Hank Aaron. He's in a league of his own, and last night, he beat the piss out of a baseball.