Ronald Acuña Jr. has another strong night with Stripers

While the return of Spencer Strider did not go as planned for the Braves, Ronald Acuña Jr. continued raking with the Gwinnett Stripers.

Originally, Acuña was slated to start in right field, but he was moved to DH shortly before the game began due to weather circumstances, which limited the Stripers contest to just five innings. Because of that, Acuña only had two plate appearances, but he did record another hit, a single to left field in his first at-bat. He now has six hits in his first 13 at-bats in AAA.

Yesterday, Alex Anthopoulos discussed the plan for Acuña moving forward. He said he would get an off-day on Wednesday before playing on Thursday, and then the next steps would be decided. Who knows if the weather limiting Acuña will change those plans, but it does feel like he might need a little more time in Gwinnett before returning to Atlanta. He has still yet to attempt a stolen base or play nine innings in the field.

“He (Acuña) is traveling with the minor-league team,” Alex Anthopoulos said. “He will be spending — we don’t have days per se — but we played him back to back days in the outfield for six innings. He played a third day in a row where he was the DH. We’d like to get him as close to nine innings as we can in the field. We feel pretty good about his timing at the plate in his at-bats. Most of the time when you send these position players on rehab assignments it’s about getting at-bats, getting timing. He’s been playing in sim games and live batting practices since Spring Training opened.”

“This is about just getting his legs underneath him. He’s not attempted a stolen base, and he’s not played nine innings in the field. So, we’ll spend the week working him through that. We’ll check in daily with the staff, but you should see the workload start to increase starting on Tuesday. Day game Wednesday on the road, so he’ll be off and then play again on Thursday. So, he’ll play two of the next three. We’ll continue to see how he does, but he’s getting very, very close.”