Old Man Acuña

A bunch of stuff on Acuña's season:

https://www.mlb.com/news/ronald-acuna-jr-leading-league-in-ops-steals

Mays, Henderson, you--that's a good place to be.

One of those mix-and-match contraptions, but:

"NL MVP favorite Ronald Acuña Jr. swiped his 40th base of 2023, becoming the first player in AL/NL history with 40 steals, 20 HRs and 50 RBIs before the All-Star break."

Actually, even better: 201 TB in 83 team games. No one's had 400 since the peak of the PED era (Bonds, Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, and Helton twice in 2000/2001).

40/70 or bust

Surprised at the lack of grouchy old coot asterisk talk for steals with the bigger bases and pickoff rules.

"AL/NL history" - is this a subtweet about the Negro Leagues or something?

Why wouldn't you just say "Major League history"?

I assume that's what that meant. Which sometimes is worth noting, but I'm not sure it applies here in that "All-Star break" seems like an MLB construct.

(And if someone did do it in the Negro Leagues, why not just mention who that was?)

I shouldn't have put the accent on Acuña's name in the thread title--not very search-friendly...Jeff Passan had a tweet about NL MVP suddenly being a three-way race. I think he's right. It's not so much that Acuña has fallen off--he's .340/.431/.553 in August--it's that Betts has gone crazy this month: .454/.510/.802. Freeman is his third candidate: .396/.446/.604 in August. Where they are in bWAR: Betts-6.9, Acuña-6.4, Freeman-5.8. fWAR: Betts-7.0, Freeman-6.4, Acuña-6.3. Vote-splitting on the Dodgers may factor in, but Betts looks like the front-runner right now.

I didn’t want to clog up the general thread with betts talk but yes, 100% to all of this, and SB’s be dammed Betts should win if the season ended today

Guessing it would have to be a razor-thin margin for SB to sway a voter today.

Not until you factor in the CS!

Two for Acuña tonight...these two guys! Trying to think of the most comparable MVP race and not coming up with a good parallel. Cabrera/Trout in a way, but Cabrera's TC carried a lot of weight (whether you think it should have or not) and it ended up being not that close, 22-6 in first-place votes. Guidry/Rice ('78) and Clemens/Mattingly ('86) came to mind, but they were fundamentally different with pitchers involved, and they weren't too close either (reversed, which I've always found interesting). Hernandez/Stargell famously tied, but I think the accepted view now is that Stargell received an inordinate amount of old-school intangible goodwill in that one. So I don't know offhand.

Betts left the game on crutches tonight so the race may be over.

x-rays were negative, so i'd doubt it.

even if betts stays in and flatlines - unless acuna hits the 40/40 it's looking like betts/freeman to lose.

Prior to tonight Acuna was #5 in HRs... on the Braves.

He's now tied at #2 with Austin Riley.

Nothing against Freeman, but I can't see Acuna being lower than 1st or 2nd.

Back in the lineup tonight after a couple of worrisome days out with calf tightness.

you can tell he wants that 40/40 bad

My guess is he's after that prime Immaculate Grid real estate.

Agree with Posnanski's post today: MVP is clearly Acuna's now.

I don't know if this has gotten any attention yet, but Acuna has 33 leadoff HR and won't turn 26 till December. He's almost cracked the Top 10 already, and he's almost halfway to Henderson's 81.