Saturday Seeds: Austin Riley gets plunked...again; Ronald's approach to stolen bases

The Atlanta Braves have had their share of injury scares in Grapefruit League action

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The regular season is almost here.

We’re now less than two weeks away from Atlanta’s regular season opener in San Diego versus the Padres, but we’ll get clarity on the final roster decisions even sooner than that: The Braves leave North Port on Sunday, March 23rd for a final spring tune-up in Arizona versus the Cubs prior to the season opener on the 27th. Any final decisions on roster spots and who is on the travel roster will undoubtedly be communicated to players over that weekend.

So, as we prepare for the final week of spring training in North Port, let’s catch you up on everything you might have missed from this week in our news roundup!

Maybe just stop throwing inside in spring training?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but another Braves slugger was hit by a pitch on a Friday by a divisional opponent and had to leave the game.

Hopefully the CT scan comes out better this time than it did for Sean Murphy.

Atlanta’s catcher was hit by the Miami Marlins two weeks ago and cracked a rib, necessitating a 4-6 week absence. Yesterday, it was Austin Riley getting hit in the hand by Washington Nationals reliever Jackson Rutledge.

(And for fun at the end of the video, there’s Rutledge and the catcher trying the exact same game plan against Orlando Arcia, to near-disasterous results)

Initial x-rays were negative for Riley and he’s listed as day-to-day for now - there’s not even plans to send him back to Atlanta for a CT scan.

Ignoring the questionable decision of Washington’s to ask a struggling former top prospect with a career 4.3 BB/9 to pitch inside, Riley’s the third everyday starter of Atlanta’s to have an injury scare in spring. I was really hoping we were leaving the injuries back in 2024, but here we are. Let’s hope that Riley avoided serious injury and will be back in the lineup on Opening Day.

Ritchie starts for the Spring Breakout on Sunday

We all expected it, but JR Ritchie is officially the starter for Sunday’s Spring Breakout matchup against the Detroit Tigers.

Ritchie, who was drafted in 2022’s first round and missed most of 2023 after Tommy John surgery, is the #7 prospect on our Braves Prospect Composite. The 21-year-old went 2-5 wth a 2.90 ERA last season, dividing his time between the complex league, Single-A Augusta, and High-A Rome.

The youngster, who grew up a Braves fan because of Dansby Swanson (who attended his beloved Vanderbilt University), was appropriately excited about the honor. “I’ve been looking forward to it since they told me about it,” said Ritchie to MLB.com’s Mark Bowman. “I’ve thought about it every day. My dad is a high school coach. I told him, ‘If there is one Minor League game I would tell you to miss to come see, it would be this one.’”

The Tigers are a good test for Ritchie - they’ve got one of the best farm systems in the game and are sending six of their top seven position player prospects to North Port to take on Atlanta. Ritchie’s not deterred, though. “[The Spring Breakout game] will be a really great experience for me to test myself and see where I’m at,” Ritchie told Bowman. “It will be a great learning experience.”

Other notable prospects appearing in the game for Atlanta include starter Garrett Baumann, outfielder Luis Guanipa, catcher Nick Montgomery, and reliever Rolddy Munoz.

“We're gonna win MVP again”

Ronald Acuña Jr, thankfully, hasn’t had any sort of injury setback as he rehabs his second ACL tear of the past three years, this one in his left knee.

He’s also not letting it get him down.

ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez dropped a great story about Ronald’s rehab of a second catastrophic injury and how this one is different. Namely, Ronald’s maturity and focus are much improved from 2022.

But also his uncertainty.

The article goes into depth of how Ronald’s Venezuela-based trainer, Juan Aular, had to talk Ronald out of an early-rehab declaration that the outfielder would no longer attempt to steal bases at all.

"He needs to learn how to play to the situation in the game," Aular told Gonzalez. "That is what's key for Ronald."

That maturity is evident in Ronald’s mindset in this rehab - he’s embraced the idea of picking and choosing his spots rather than attempting to always be pushing the limits on the basepaths. The benefits are clear to Acuña: "I'd rather steal 30 and play the whole season as opposed to trying to steal 70, injuring myself and missing the whole year," Acuña told Gonzalez.

I’m on board.

A reduction in stolen base attempts, as long as it comes with an accompanying increase in success rate, may actually end up being more valuable for Atlanta.

That calculus comes down to the value of a stolen base versus the damage of a caught stealing, because understand that those two are not equal at all.

There’s been work on this done by FanGraphs, who calculate the value of stolen bases via their wSB metric, and to simplify this a lot: A stolen base is worth 0.169 runs on a team’s expected run scoring, while a caught stealing costs a team 0.394 runs.

You have to steal at a 70% clip for it to be exactly neutral value.¹

In his MVP season of 2023, Ronald stole a MLB-leading 73 bases in 91 attempts, an 80.22% rate. According to the wSB metric on FanGraphs, that was worth +7 runs over the course of the season. When you consider that ten runs is the established threshold for one WAR but that a replacement player would still generate some small number of runs, Ronald accounted for roughly 0.5 to 0.6 additional WAR in 2023 by stealing 73 bases.

Feels like a pretty small return for such a significant effort (and injury risk, as it turns out).

While stolen bases can be more valuable in certain situations, especially in the postseason where runs are at a premium, and there’s some sort of “distraction to the pitcher” aspect that we can’t quantify, I think I agree with Ronald here.

I’d rather have him steal 30 (and maybe get caught once) and be around all season versus stealing 73 but getting caught 18 times, even if he were here all season either way.

Let’s see if this mentality holds, though. The gist of that ESPN article was that no one really thinks it will.

President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos on the topic, to Gonzalez:

"I'll believe it when I see it. And I don't mean that in a bad way. He's just such a good base-stealer. From a medical standpoint, if he's cleared and he's fine, I think he'll find a sweet spot that makes sense for him. But we haven't told him anything specifically. Once he's back, the plan is that he's back with no restrictions."

Neither did first baseman Matt Olson. “"I don't think he'll ever give it up," Olson told Gonzalez. "It's the player he is. Yeah, you can choose when you run and stuff, but I bet once he gets back out there, he gets his legs under him, back into playing speed, he's gonna be the same ol' Ronald."

That’ll be a sight for sore eyes.

1. Also, never steal third base with two outs. It’s practically worthless, even if you make it, as it raises the team’s run expectancy by exactly 0.044 runs. Just don’t.