Snitker, Mattingly discuss Acuña's HBP

ATLANTA -- As Braves manager Brian Snitker prepared for Saturday’s game, he had no desire to continue talking about how tired he is of seeing the Marlins hit Ronald Acuña Jr. with pitches.

“I spoke about all this yesterday,” Snitker said. “I would kind of like to focus on today. I mean, that's water under the bridge.”

Actually, Snitker said very little after Friday’s 1-0 win over the Marlins. He let his actions speak for themselves with the anger he showed after Pablo López hit Acuña with the first pitch of Friday’s game. He wasn’t nearly as hot as he had been way back on Aug. 15, 2018, when Jose Ureña infuriated both the Braves and his Marlins teammates by drilling Acuña with the first pitch of the game.

But Snitker was incensed enough to get the attention of crew chief Dan Iassogna and the rest of the umpiring crew, who opted to eject López after talking on the field.

“I wouldn’t be mad at Snit for protecting his own players,” Mattingly said. “But I think for me, it influenced the umpires to make that call. They weren’t getting together until Brian [Snitker] came out. So, from his standpoint, he did a great job. He influenced them to get rid of our pitcher and run through our whole bullpen.”

What maddens both managers is the fact that they are still dealing with the lingering effects of Ureña drilling Acuña when the Braves’ outfielder was bidding to hit a leadoff homer in a fourth straight game nearly three full years ago.

Ureña is no longer a Marlin. But his actions that day still ignite the anger the Braves have felt as Acuña has now been hit six times by the Marlins. Three of those occasions have been with the first pitch of the game.

After Friday’s game, and again on Saturday, Mattingly said he felt the end point of this war should have been when Mike Soroka hit Peter O’Brien in the left rib cage during a game on May 4, 2019. O’Brien was hit with a first-pitch fastball thrown with two outs in the sixth inning of a game the Braves led 5-2.

“That was their payback after they thought Acuña got hit the first time on purpose,” Mattingly said. “That was the next season, [the] first time.”

But it wasn’t. When Soroka hit O’Brien, the Braves and Marlins were playing for the eighth time since Ureña hit Acuña.

Eight days after Acuña was drilled by Ureña, the Braves hit Brian Anderson with two pitches. One was a 1-0 fastball that Sean Newcomb threw in the sixth inning. The other was a 78 mph curveball thrown by Jesse Biddle with the Braves leading 5-0 in the ninth.

While Mattingly thinks Soroka hitting O’Brien might have been an endpoint, it would seemingly be easier to argue that Newcomb plunking Anderson was an endpoint. But suspicion arose again on Aug. 20, 2019, when Elieser Hernandez hit Acuña with the first pitch of the game.

Just like after the Ureña plunking, Snitker was ejected after Acuña was hit by Hernandez.

Acuña was hit by the Marlins just once in 2019, and the only incident during the 2020 regular season came when Ureña hit the Braves' outfielder with a 1-1 fastball in the fourth inning of a Sept. 7 game in which the Marlins were leading 4-3.

After Acuña hit a leadoff homer against Sandy Alcantara in Game 1 of last year’s National League Division Series, the Marlins’ right-hander hit the Braves’ All-Star with an 0-1 fastball in the third. The Braves were trailing 4-1 at the time. They tallied two runs in that inning and rolled toward a sweep of the best-of-five series.

“He just goes out and makes it worse on you,” Mattingly said. “His responses have been really what you want players to do. They take care of it by hurting you on the field.”