ATLANTA (AP) — Ronald Acuna Jr. had a case of jitters before he stepped in the batter’s box for the first time Tuesday night.
He had homered in the leadoff spot twice in a doubleheader the day before, so even Acuna wondered if it could happen again.
“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hit another home run like that,” he said through a translator. “At first I laughed a lot, but then I got nervous again.”
He didn’t stay nervous for long.
Acuna became the youngest player in major league history to homer in five straight games, hitting a leadoff shot on the first pitch and adding a three-run long ball in the seventh inning to help the surging Atlanta Braves beat the Miami Marlins 10-6.
Freddie Freeman hit his 20th homer to tie it in the sixth, and Dansby Swanson had a tiebreaking RBI single in the seventh as the NL East-leading Braves won for the 13th time in 17 games to take a two-game lead over Philadelphia. Atlanta is 16 games over .500 for the first time since winning the division five years ago.
The 20-year-old Acuna homered on Miami’s first pitch for the second straight night and became the first player to hit a leadoff homer in three consecutive games since Baltimore’s Brady Anderson went deep in four straight in 1996. On Monday, he became the fourth player in major league history to hit leadoff homers in both games of a doubleheader.
“You see him smiling,” Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte said. “It’s contagious what he’s doing. He’s best leadoff hitter I’ve ever seen. He’s the best player I’ve ever seen. Hopefully he’s going to continue to help us in the long run.”
Acuna went deep to left-center in the first off Trevor Richards and homered to right-center, his 19th of the year, off left-hander Adam Conley to give the Braves a 10-6 lead in the seventh.
“Freddie and I were looking at each other,” manager Brian Snitker said. “He was in the hole, and we were like, ‘My God, are we seeing this?’ And the explosions when he hit ‘em, too. I don’t know. It’s pretty good.”
J.T. Realmuto drove in four runs for Miami, hitting his 15th homer to tie it at 2-all in the third and lining a two-run single in the fourth to give the Marlins a 5-4 lead.
Acuna, who went 3 for 5 and enjoyed his first multi-homer game, has homered in seven of his last eight games and is hitting .358.