‘I did nothing to help the team:’ Acuña Jr. fights back tears after Braves elimination

Ronald Acuña Jr. cut his postgame media scrum short at his locker as his eyes welled up with tears.

The former MVP and five-time All-Star was overcome with emotion as he tried to explain his role in the Atlanta Braves’ exit from the NL Division Series with Thursday night’s 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4.

“I feel like I did nothing to help the team this series,” Acuña said through Braves interpreter Franco Garcia. “You know, I’m supposed to be a spark plug for my team out there, and I never lit that fire. And so, extremely disappointed.”

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Acuña said his sore knee, on which he had an MRI after Game 3 to check for a potential injury, was not a factor in his performance.

Acuña was 2 for 15 in the series with no home runs and no RBIs. There was a smattering of boos at Truist Park after he grounded out in his final at-bat to finish the night 0 for 3.

“It’s frustrating just because I know the talent that I have,” he said before he sat down and cut off questions.

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There was more to the Braves’ offensive struggles than just Acuña. Matt Olson and Drake Baldwin, Atlanta’s other two top hitters, were just as unproductive. The trio went a combined 5 for 45 (.111) with no homers and one RBI against a Dodgers pitching staff that looks capable of leading the franchise to its third straight World Series title. The three sluggers were 0 for 11 in the clincher.

As a team, the Braves hit .145 in the series and averaged two runs per game, a quiet end to a season in which they won 94 games and the NL East title under first-year manager Walt Weiss.

“Losing is definitely the number one (frustration),” said Baldwin, whose eyes were also red from tears. “(Winning is) the only goal, but just not coming through. I mean, most of it relates back to that. It’s doing what we can to win games and execute that.”

Due to a combination of injuries and scheduling, the Braves were forced to use two bullpen games to start the series at Dodger Stadium, and Atlanta managed to get a split. But with the Braves’ top two starting pitchers available at home, the offense dried up. Atlanta scored just two runs in two games.

“The Dodgers have something to do with that,” Weiss said. “They’re going for their third straight world championship for a reason. Their arms just keep coming at you.

“But that’s the postseason. You never know what you’re going to get. It’s very unpredictable. But some guys, you have a lot of unsung heroes a lot of times in the postseason, and sometimes guys struggle. It’s obviously magnified because you’re playing under a microscope. We struggled with runners in scoring position. So did the Dodgers. The games were really tight.”

Austin Riley, who hit a three-run homer to send the Braves to a victory over the Phillies in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, also struggled against the Dodgers’ star-studded rotation of Tarik Skubal, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow.

Should the Braves’ offense be given a little grace, given who they were facing?

“The competitive side of me is like, no, but you know, they’re tough,” Riley said. “They’re a tough group, they really are. But at the same time, in order to get to where we want to be, we’ve got to be able put together hits and score runs against those guys.”

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