With a speed-power season like no other in major league history, Ronald Acuna Jr. is making his case as the game’s most exciting player

BY KIERAN STECKLEY

Rob Manfred should send Ronald Acuna Jr. a gift basket. A really nice one, too.

It’s the least the MLB Commissioner can do after what Acuna has done for the game Manfred presides over.

Not that any sympathy is warranted, but Major League Baseball’s head has had a tough go of it. Several foot-in-mouth comments come to mind. Figuring out a once-ina-lifetime pandemic got the best of our world’s most sharp scientists and politicians, so safe to say a sports commissioner wasn’t going to get it 100 percent right. Oh, and there was a collective bargaining dispute against maybe the world’s strongest labor union.

Manfred, and his sport, needed a win.

2018 Topps Heritage High Numbers #580 RC

And that win was Acuna

Baseball had an action problem. It was too stationary. Analytics, brilliant as they are, did not make for a visibly-appealing game. So, Manfred shook things up. Out were shifts and limitless pickoff attempts and timeouts. In was the pitch clock and bigger bases.