Ronald Acuna Jr. reported to Atlanta Braves spring training three days early. He appeared to be feeling awfully chipper and apologized for his struggles during the 2023 NLDS and for not speaking with the media after the final game.

He also mentioned that it’s no secret that he wants to be a Brave for life. Here is why that’s probably not going to happen.

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Comparing Alex Anthopoulos’ extension to Ronald Acuna Jr.’s

Alex Anthopoulos recently signed a contract extension with the Braves that will keep him at the helm through the 2031 season.

This means that AA will still be pulling the strings in the front office when Acuna’s contract is up.

AA’s history of NOT signing long-term free agent deals

We all know Alex Anthopoulos does not like to pay long-term free-agent prices, especially at the top of the market. Here’s a blog post complaining about his aversion to free-agent pitchers during his time with the Blue Jays from 2013.

We watched as Anthopoulos made good offers to Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson but was unwilling to pay market value. He has preferred his contracts mostly on one-year deals with low risk or long-term team-friendly extensions like Acuna’s, or Ozzie Albies‘s, or Spencer Strider‘s, or Austin Riley‘s, or Matt Olson‘s… to name a few.

Riley and Olson’s contracts max out at $22 million per year and both are locked in for several years. If you combine their max annual salaries together, you get just $4 million more than what Aaron Judge makes per year.

When you look around at the game’s top players, we are beginning to see a lot of guys around that $40 million/year mark. Mike Trout lives there.

In fact, 16 players currently have an average annual value over $30 million.

Four players are at $40 million or more.

These numbers are according to Spotrac.com, and they don’t even include arbitration eligible players like Juan Soto, who will get $31 million from the Yankees in 2024.

How much will Acuna’s next contract be worth?

Assuming Ronald Acuna Jr. continues to be one of the best players in all of baseball, he should command top dollar. If the top dollar is around $40 million in 2024, one can only imagine where that ceiling will be for a player of Acuna’s caliber.

It was reported in 2021 that Juan Soto rejected a 15-year, $440 million offer by the Nationals. That contract is just under $30 million per year but 15-years is an incredible number of years for a club to guarantee money. Even still, Soto turned it down because he has his sights set on the sky.

AA and other smart front office executives assign values to players and they don’t like to go over them. Acuna is going to push the limits of overspending (assuming he’s healthy and productive by then) and it isn’t going to be the Braves writing the check.

Can you envision it now? Acuna signs through his age-42 season at $39 million per year? A couple of years into the contract he stops stealing to protect himself from injuries (like Trout has done). Every time he suffers an ailment, fans will roll their eyes and complain about how much money he gets paid to be hurt.

How often do these massive contracts actually work out anyway? The Braves will have had the best of Acuna’s career. Another team will end up overpaying for all the things he did in Atlanta instead of what he will do with them in the future, think Albert Pujols.

That is all of course, unless Acuna is willing to take a little less money to be a “Brave for life.” I wouldn’t count on it.