Braves Teammates Must Be Forgiving But Ronald Acuña Jr. Has to Change Too

Anyone who follows baseball knows that Atlanta Braves phenom Ronald Acuna Jr. is one of the five most talented players in the game. He has speed, power and is a plus defender, by the eye test and metrics.

However, Acuña has some dog in his game, and it was on full display in Game 1 of the NLDS against the St. Louis Cardinals, as he failed to run hard out of the box on what should've been a leadoff double in the seventh. Of course, this came just before several layers of catastrophe arrived in Atlanta, allowing the masses to assign much of the momentum-shifting blame in one direction.

As you can imagine, his teammates were asked about it after the game, and they were pretty straightforward.

"It's a big deal," Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies told reporters. "He needs to do better."

Freddie Freeman, the leader of this team, wasn't thrilled about it, either.

"It's frustrating, but I think you have that conversation once, it's become a dead horse, kind of beating a dead horse if you keep having that same conversation over and over again," Freeman said. "You've got to know that was a mistake, so that can't happen in the playoffs, can't happen in the regular season, (but) unfortunately that happened tonight."

Acuna's teammates aired their grievances publicly last night, and I doubt they'll bring it up again today. While I don't think he has any malicious intent when it comes to these momentary lapses, there's no doubt the 21-year-old needs to change his ways, too.

There's no excuse, especially in the postseason, for not giving 100 percent effort. Who cares if you think you went bridge? Just run hard out of the box. Nobody paid money to see you show off, and it's simply unfair to your teammates and entire organization.

Acuña is young and you want to cut him some slack, but this type of thing is happening too frequently to give him a complete pass. His teammates can't ostracize him, but he can't gleefully wake up on Friday and forget to address it, either. Hopefully, Thursday night's debacle will get through to him this time around.