The Sporting News has released its winners for MLB awards, and a pair of Braves were recognized. Ronald Acuna Jr. was honored as the Player of the Year, and Brian Snitker earned the co-NL Manager of the Year award.
https://twitter.com/sportingnews/status/1717583880797266221?s=20
NL Manager of the Year: Tie: Brian Snitker, Braves, and Craig Counsell, Brewers
Snitker’s Braves were expected to be good, but few people expected this historic regular season.
Counsell helped the overachieving Brewers capture the competitive NL Central. pic.twitter.com/H2ADDB6OoB
— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) October 26, 2023
Acuna is set to capture the first of many MVPs in November after becoming the first player to hit 40 home runs and swipe 70 stolen bases. Nobody has even come close either. Acuna set new marks at 30 home runs and 60 stolen bases, 40/50, and 40/60.
He did it all while hitting .337 with a .416 on-base percentage; he was stellar in all facets of the game offensively. Acuna hit for contact, for power, took his walks, cut down on his strikeouts, and led the league in stolen bases. There was nothing he did this season that was anything short of remarkable.
He deserves all the praise he’s going to garner in a couple of weeks when the MLB officially presents him the 2023 NL MVP award. Brian Snitker, on the other hand, rarely gets praise.
The Braves skipper has been around baseball twice as long as I’ve even been alive but has only really been honored once at the national level in 2018 when he won NL Manager of the Year. When you have a club as talented as Atlanta, that’s the reality a manager faces.
However, he deserves more praise for the work he did in 2021, pulling all the right levers and pushing all the right buttons in the Braves’ triumphant return to the top of the mountain, capturing their first World Series title since 1995.
Brian Snitker, Ronald Acuna Jr., and plenty of other Braves deserve to be honored for the historic 2023 campaign they put together. Even if it didn’t end how anyone wanted, it was a special season.
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Photographer:Â Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire
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