Insider Makes Case For Braves to Trade Ronald Acuna Jr.

Could Ronald Acuna Jr. be a trade candidate for the Atlanta Braves?

The Atlanta Braves continue to wallow around near the bottom of the National League overall standings, are 7.0 games out of a Wild Card berth, and have five other teams to climb over in order to even get there.

Top of the rotation arms Chris Sale and Spencer Schwellenbach are out for months with a fractured rib cage and a fractured elbow, respectively. Atlanta needs to face it, the playoffs are a pipe dream this season.

It's been a long, long, time since the Braves have been a seller at the trade deadline, but it looks like 2025 will be the year.

And while names like Marcell Ozuna and Raisel Iglesias are certainly players to watch, they'll both be rentals and won't bring in a huge return. But baseball insider Joel Sherman has turned some heads with his bold pronouncement that the Braves should also look to trade former MVP Ronald Acuna Jr.

Should the Atlanta Braves trade Ronald Acuna Jr.?

.@Joelsherman1 makes the case for trading Ronald Acuña Jr. https://t.co/T2DI3GqPu1 pic.twitter.com/F5PF92CmkW
— MLB Now (@MLBNow) July 2, 2025

"Should they trade Acuna right now? Here would be my argument to the Atlanta front office on why it would be valuable to do this right now: Can you look at this team, which I think has almost zero chance to get to the playoffs now?... This might be a lost year.

"By the way, we won that championship in 2021 without Acuna. We played the last four months of last season without Acuna and made the playoffs again. By the way, we have a better record this year without Acuna at the beginning of the season (24-25), than with Acuna (15-22 since the end of May).

"At some point, I would say... we have to talk seriously about, 'we're not getting a lot for Ozuna and Iglesias'. I would say... Acuna, in this marketplace, without offensive players of this stature, you could make the Juan Soto trade."

He then goes on to suggest the Seattle Mariners as the team that the Braves should target to get that massive 5+ prospect haul. Seattle happens to have nine of Baseball America's Top 100 prospects. And they have the worst right field production in baseball. Wouldn't Acuna put them over the top and finally into the playoffs, asks Sherman?

Acuna has 3+ years left on his contract (two of them are club options) at $17 million per season. He's been on fire since coming back from his latest knee blowout last year, currently batting .344 with a 1.047 OPS and nine homers in 37 games.