Good luck, baseball: Braves' dominance coming with Ronald Acuña Jr. slumping

Ronald Acuña Jr. has not played at an MVP level for the first month of the season. Neither can be said for his Atlanta Braves teammates Matt Olson and Austin Riley. While Marcell Ozuna and others have largely carried the Atlanta offense during this trio's month-long slumps of sorts, it is only a matter of time before Atlanta's right fielder, first baseman and third baseman are firing on all cylinders together.

David O'Brien of The Athletic went into great detail as to why Acuña, Olson and Riley are all slumping. While Olson and Riley showed signs of life with several hard outs in Atlanta's weekend series victory over the AL-leading Cleveland Guardians, Acuña has not been himself at the plate for different reasons. Much of this has to do with missing the bulk of spring training with yet another knee injury.

Acuña is the table setter for this offense. However, Atlanta has been able to stay atop the standings across baseball because key contributors like Ozuna, Travis d'Arnaud and Michael Harris II have raked all year long at the plate. Even newcomer Jarred Kelenic has been better than advertised in his soft platoon with Adam Duvall in left fielder. Eventually, Acuña will get back to being an all-world player.

The biggest reason why O'Brien hinted he has to is because of the strain it is putting on the rotation.

Ronald Acuña Jr. will eventually carry the Atlanta Braves' offense again

What O'Brien outlined is why this team is built to win big during the regular season, and if it gets the right matchups in October, can win the World Series. The math is not in the opposition's favor to have literally all of the Braves' stars' bats go cold at the same time. Like Lou Brown once said in Major League for totally different reasons, "this has happened before", mostly vs. the Philadelphia Phillies...

The other reason why I think Acuña will get back to being himself sooner rather than later is he is still trying to shake some of the rust off from not doing a whole helluva lot during Spring Training. For Olson, his timing appears to be off at the plate just a tad. With Riley, he may be trying to pull everything, or just has gotten really unlikely with his batted balls in play. Regardless, they will be fine.

What is important to know is other parts of this Braves team will cool off at some point. Like, Ozuna is not going to hit for the Triple Crown this season. D'Arnaud is not going to be a top-15 MVP candidate behind the dish for Atlanta. Reynaldo Lopez is going to have a bad start at some point. Harris and Ozzie Albies may go into slumps of their own. However, Acuña, Olson and Riley should bounce back.

When the Braves are firing on all cylinders offensively, this team has the potential to win 110 games.