Ronald Acuña may win NL MVP despite being historically unlucky

Ronald Acuña Jr. has been the leader in the clubhouse all season for the best team in baseball. The Atlanta Braves won their 100th game of the season on Sunday, with Acuña watching from the dugout as his teammates put the finishing touches on another dominant season.

The Braves are on track to enter the MLB playoffs as the No. 1 seed with an automatic buy. Depth has been a common theme with this Braves team — eight All-Stars, most in the MLB — but Acuña is the MVP frontrunner, and for good reason. He has shattered records and become founder of exclusive clubs.

He is the first player in league history to achieve 40 home runs and 60 stolen bases. His stat line reads like a jacked up Create-a-Player: .336/.415/.595, 40 home runs, 101 RBIs, 68 stolen bases. There isn't a player who better blends contact, power, and speed on the base paths.

Acuña has built his incredible list of accomplishments while battling historic levels of bad luck at the plate. It's not often that one can earnestly factor the nebulous concept of "luck" into the MVP debate, but Acuña might be an exception to that rule.

Atlanta Braves' Ronald Acuña Jr. on MVP track despite historic bad luck at plate

The Braves' slugger is on the precipice of his first MVP award despite recording the most outs made on barreled baseballs in the Statcast era. Here's what that means, from MLB dot com:

"The Barrel classification is assigned to batted-ball events whose comparable hit types (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) have led to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage since Statcast was implemented Major League wide in 2015."

Basically, Acuña has been caught or throw out on more hard-hit balls than any other player since 2015. That's partially a factor of Acuña simply hitting more barrels than your average MLB player (Aaron Judge held the same record after last season), but it goes to show that Acuña, with a little more luck, could have been even more dominant.

There are plenty of players in Acuña's position who feel like the product of luck. Not Acuña. We can't engrave his name on the trophy just yet — Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts is hot on his heels with a sturdy case of his own — but no matter how the race shakes out, Acuña will end the season in the record books. And, we will all know it could have been even better.