Ronald Acuña Jr. All-Star conversation? More like NL MVP conversation

The Braves won’t have as many All-Stars as they have in year’s past. About the only one that’s a guarantee right now is Chris Sale, but Ronald Acuña Jr. is quickly entering the shoo-in category and will likely be Atlanta’s only position player to represent the team at Truist Park this year.

Acuña might be as locked in as we’ve ever seen him, which is almost unexplainable, given he just returned from his second torn ACL about a month ago. In his last eight games, he’s hitting .577 with four home runs and is slugging over 1.000, leading to a 1.763 OPS. It’s been an unbelievable stretch, and his numbers since returning haven’t been much worse.

Acuña is already the Braves third best player in terms of FanGraphs WAR at 1.9, trailing only Chris Sale (2.5) and Matt Olson (2.2), despite playing in less than a third of the games. There’s a more than real chance he’s the Braves leader in WAR by the All-Star break, and if he continues at remotely the same pace, he’ll be squarely in the NL MVP race in a couple of months.

Acuña’s 1.9 WAR is already good enough to rank him ninth among all National League outfielders (!), just a tick behind the New York Mets new $765 million man Juan Soto, who has accrued just 2.0 fWAR in 73 games. Acuña should be named an All-Star based on merit alone, without even considering he’s missed well over half the season to this point.

But more than anything, the All-Star Game is about one thing — STARS! There is only one star in all of baseball that can lay claim to being more popular than Ronald Acuña Jr. He is one of the faces of baseball, and the All-Star Game is in Atlanta. Even if he didn’t come out of the gates with a 1.300 OPS, he should be included in the game. The fact that he’s running circles around the rest of National League makes this decision a no-brainer.

The real question is whether Acuña can insert himself into the NL MVP conversation. That doesn’t seem far-fetched at all. There are some guys having some great seasons, but Acuña is on a far different pace, just 2.1 WAR behind the National League leader in WAR Pete Crow-Armstrong. If Acuña is up there with the National League leaders in WAR and leads the Braves to the playoffs, there shouldn’t be much of a discussion.