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Last week’s MLB drama starring superstar Ronald Acuña Jr. and manager Brian Snitker feels like must-see TV for Braves fans — and for anyone who cares about baseball’s unwritten rules and the changing culture of the game. Hosts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman broke it all down on the latest episode of “Baseball Bar-B-Cast.”
If you missed the moment, here’s the short version: Braves outfielder Jarred Kelenic thought he hit a home run, admired it, then realized he needed to hustle and was thrown out at second base. Manager Brian Snitker, when asked later about the play, essentially shrugged it off, saying that Kelenic always hustles and that he hadn’t even noticed the mistake until it was brought to his attention later.
Enter Ronald Acuña Jr., currently rehabbing and watching from home. Acuña responded on Twitter to Braves beat writer Mark Bowman’s tweet about Snitker’s non-reaction. Ronald’s not-so-subtle point in his since-deleted tweet? “If it were me, they would have taken me out of the game.”
As Mintz and Shusterman pointed out, that isn’t a hypothetical. This actually did happen with Acuña in 2019, when Snitker benched him for a similar base-running mistake.
The double standard — and why it matters
Mintz and Shusterman dive into the not-so-subtle double standard at play in this situation. When Acuña made his mistake, Snitker made a very public example of him, saying, among other things, “You’ve got to run. It’s not going to be acceptable here. … And that name on the front is a lot more important than the name on the back of that jersey.”
With Kelenic? Total non-event. Snitker seemed to miss the play entirely when it happened and downplayed it after the fact.
Sure, there are layers here. The Braves’ outfield is hurting lately, Kelenic has the “plays with his hair on fire” label, and, it must be acknowledged, there’s a cultural component at play when a flashy Latin superstar receives different treatment than a scrappy white guy.
As Mintz puts it, “Obviously, there’s the double standard, which is founded in, like, Ronald is a Latin guy who is cool, and Jarred Kelenic is, like, your scrappy white guy out there doing his best. That is definitely a part of this.”
Acuña’s call-out: Fair or foul?
Was Ronald right to speak up? Mintz and Shusterman both agree: Acuña’s frustration is justified, but he mishandled it.
“That’s a legit gripe,” Mintz says. “[But] send it in an email, right? Talk about it in person. … I am happy that Ronald did this in public because it’s hilarious, and we can joke and talk about it on the podcast, but it’s not the way you go about it.”
In other words, the double standard in the treatment of two Braves players is real, but it was the right message, wrong medium. “Multiple things can be true,” Mintz says. “Ronald is right in what he believes, and he is wrong in how he chose to exhibit that.”
What does this mean for the Braves?
Does this one social media post reflect some kind of clubhouse meltdown? Probably not. Still, Mintz ponders, “When is the last time we saw a player publicly criticize a manager on the internet?” Forget the play on the field; this is a signal that, for Atlanta, things aren’t humming along as smoothly as they have in recent years.
The Braves might iron this out internally, but now the rest of the sport will be watching to see how they handle it.
“No one looks good here,” Mintz says. “Kelenic looks bad. Snitker looks bad. And I actually do think Acuña looks a little bit bad. He looks the least bad, but he still looks bad.”
For more on this and other baseball debates, tune in to “Baseball-Bar-B-Cast” on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
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