Acuna Denies Podcast Insult Was Aimed at Snitker, Says It Was a Former Assistant Coach

Ronald Acuna Jr. says the internet identified the wrong man. After Atlanta’s season ended on Wednesday night, the Braves star told The Athletic that the profane podcast remark which spent the week being read as an attack on former manager Brian Snitker was not about Snitker at all, the New York Post reports. He was talking about a former assistant coach, in a conversation that reached back to his minor-league years, and he will not say which one.

What was actually said on La Bestia?

Less than the reaction suggested, and in Spanish. On Monday’s episode of Acuna’s podcast La Bestia, recorded with William Contreras and Jackson Chourio, the Brewers outfielder whose walk-off decided a game in the other division series, Contreras asked how things were with Atlanta’s coaches now. A translated clip posted by Phillip Feliz had Acuna answering that everything was good, nobody had bothered him since, and adding a profane line about someone who thought he was the king, the Post reports.

The episode dropped on the Braves’ off day, under 24 hours before Game 3 in Los Angeles. By the time Atlanta’s series resumed, the clip had a target attached to it, and the target was the man who managed Acuna for most of a decade.

Why did the Snitker reading take hold so fast?

Because the history makes it plausible on contact. In August 2019, Snitker pulled a 21-year-old Acuna mid-game against the Dodgers after he stood and watched a drive hit the wall and turned an extra-base hit into a single, Heavy reports. Snitker’s position then was simple: you have to run. Acuna accepted the benching publicly at the time.

The episode returned in April 2025, when Jarred Kelenic admired a long ball, was thrown out stretching it, and was not punished. Acuna, rehabbing a torn ACL, posted that if it were him, they would take him out of the game, the Post reports. He deleted it and apologised to Snitker and his team-mates. So when a podcast answer about coaches surfaced in October 2026, listeners did not need the name filled in. The one textual clue pointing elsewhere is Contreras himself, who began saying ‘el gerente’ as Acuna finished, a word for a general manager rather than a dugout manager, the Post reports.

What exactly is Acuna’s denial?

Specific about the target, silent about the name. He said he did not take a swipe at Snitker in that moment, that the rumours were all wrong, and that he meant a former assistant coach, ClutchPoints reports. The conversation, he said, was about the past generally, including things from the minor leagues. Asked who, he answered that he was not going to violate that code.

That answer both closes and preserves the story. It clears Snitker, who is still in Atlanta’s front office as a senior advisor after stepping down following the 2025 season, Heavy reports, and whose replacement Walt Weiss had just managed the elimination game in which Tyler Mahle’s televised frustration summed up Atlanta’s night. But an unnamed assistant coach from a decade of professional baseball is a target almost nobody can check, which is why the translator’s parallel argument matters.

Why is the translator still fighting his corner?

Because his credibility became the second story. Feliz, who translates athletes from Spanish to English on X, posted a video on Tuesday defending the clip after fans questioned his translation and, he says, the Braves questioned him directly, the Post reports. His position is that his job is accuracy, not reputation management for any club, and he pointed viewers to the extended clip to judge for themselves.

That standoff is the modern shape of these rows. A player speaks in his own language, on his own show, in the middle of a playoff series Atlanta had opened by dropping Game 1 in Los Angeles; a translator’s rendering becomes the news; and the denial has to argue with a translation as much as with a quote. The week also produced a stand-side clip from the same series that fans are still arguing about, and in both cases the footage outran everyone’s first explanation of it.

What happens next for Acuna and the Braves?

An off-season that starts with a question he created. Acuna went 3-for-24 in the postseason with no home runs and no RBIs, the Post reports, in a regular season of .255 with 20 home runs and 55 RBIs across 107 games. Atlanta’s winter was always going to involve hard decisions about a veteran core that underperformed in October; the podcast has added a relationship question to the baseball ones.

Snitker has not commented, and on Acuna’s account he has nothing to comment on. That is the test of the denial: if the club and its former manager treat the story as closed, it closes. If the extended clip keeps circulating with the Snitker reading attached, Acuna may find that refusing to name the real target leaves the famous one in place by default.