Much to the dismay of baseball fans, top prospect Ronald Acuña was reassigned by the Atlanta Braves to Minor League Camp on Monday. Acuña will have to remain in the Minor Leagues until at least April 13 if Atlanta wants to gain an extra year of control over the rising star.

Braves’ General Manager Alex Anthopoulos justified the move by saying this:

“Right now, just go down, play, get into a routine of playing of playing every day, nine innings, the flow of the season. Get into the flow, keep doing what he was doing and he’ll find his way back here, hopefully very soon.”

“The more we talked about it organizationally, from a philosophical standpoint, having more development time, no one’s ever been hurt by that. We do feel like it’s probably best overall from a philosophical standpoint to get him more development time”

These justifications are proven invalid when you think about Acuña’s Spring Training stats and the fact that Service time manipulation is not exactly a new concept. Ronald Acuña’s fantastic statistics are as follows.

The future of the Atlanta Braves hit 325/.374/.522 with 31 doubles, 21 home runs, 82 RBI, 88 runs scored, and stole 44 bases across three levels in the Minors. Acuña had hit .432 with 4 homers and 11 RBI in 44 spring at-bats. There was nothing preventing him from making the opening day roster besides Atlanta’s front office which is a shame since Acuña has more than proved that he is ready for the Majors.

The Atlanta Braves cut 6 players on Monday, they were as follows, Ronald Acuña Jr., catcher Rob Brantley, infielder Christian Colon, outfielder Dustin Peterson and right-handed pitchers Josh Graham and Miguel Socolovich. Obviously. of the six Major-League-Hopefuls, Acuña was both the biggest surprise and caused the biggest uproar.

While it is not exactly a situation the fans want to be in, as Acuña’s arrival to the Major Leagues is highly anticipated. Despite the fact that Acuña will miss the first few weeks of the season, he is the favorite to win the National League Rookie of the Year Award, and it will almost certainly be worth the wait, especially for Braves fans.