Ronald Acuña Jr's electric offensive season is largely credited to one historic change

The 2nd largest single-season drop in strikeout rate in history is fueling Ronald's MVP-caliber season

Ronald Acuña Jr's season for the Atlanta Braves is MVP caliber - not only has he accomplished only the 5th 40/40 season in MLB history, but he's leading the league in most offensive categories and top five in just about all the rest. The National League MVP is his to lose at this point. 

And there's one big change to his offensive approach that's unlocked this league-leading production: A dramatic cut in his strikeout rate.

We talked about this back in June, but MLB.com published an update today and it's even more striking at the end of the season: he's cut his strikeout rate by more than half, and it keeps getting better every month. 

Ronald's averaged somewhere between a 23% and 30% strikeout rate for the first five years of his career, settling in 2022 at 23.6%. 

But now? It's at 11%, the sixth-lowest strikeout rate in all of baseball as of Tuesday, down over 12.3% from last year.  

The historic part is that it's the 2nd-largest strikeout rate drop of all time, behind only Mark Belanger's 1968 to 1969 improvement of 12.6% (which coincided with rule changes to increase offense). 

And remember how we said it keeps getting better every month? His worst strikeout month was April and September was at only 8% entering Tuesday night's matchup with the Cubs. But unlike the rest of that list, Ronald's hitting for power - his slugging percentage in September is .739, and most folks around him on the leaderboard have a OPS that's barely that figure. 

And the trend we talked about in June has continued - Ronald's just not missing fastballs anymore. His swing-and-miss percentage, virtually identical against breaking pitches and offspeed, is down against fastballs from 23% to only 14%. 

Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who MLB.com spoke to for the piece, credits a lot of Ronald's improvement to him finally being fully healthy and getting a full season of at-bats to improve. 

“Really, you look at it, it's been a long time since he's been completely healthy and had a full season, you know?”

And they're right. 2019 was mostly healthy for Acuña - his slight hamstring aggravation late in September ultimately ended his 40/40 chase just three steals short, but 2020 was a shortened season, 2021 saw him suffer the torn ACL, and 2022 saw Ronald attempting to play his way back into midseason form while learning to trust the surgically-repaired knee. 

And if this is what a fully healthy Ronald Acuña Jr is capable of, the rest of the league needs to look out. 

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