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The Atlanta Braves woke up on Sunday morning to the new reality that they will have to go through the rest of the 2021 season without the services of their top player in Ronald Acuña Jr. Acuña injured his knee in the fifth inning of Saturday’s victory in Miami and had to be hauled off the field. An MRI scan later revealed a complete ACL tear in his right knee and he will be missing the remainder of the season.
“This is what we didn’t want to hear,” said Brian Snitker speaking to the media on Sunday morning. “We were hoping it would be the best. It’s not. It’s just another punch in the stomach that we have to endure. Snitker added: “Ronald is young, he is strong. take great care of him. I expect him to recover and be as strong as he has ever been.
In a season most remembered for players lost to injury, Acuña was the one player Atlanta could least afford to lose. He was preparing for another career best season, but now the Braves will have to figure out how to continue without him.
“You’re not going to replace it,” Snitker said. “This guy is arguably the best player in the game right now.”
Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t mean Braves and Snitker will simply throw in the towel in the second half.
“We’re just going to keep playing,” Snitker said of the sequel. “The same when we lost Marcel, the same when we lost Travis. We’ve been through this before. It’s nothing new to this group of guys. They’ve all been there. It’s just another punch in the stomach.
In addition to Marcell Ozuna and Travis d’Arnaud, the Braves lost Mike Soroka to another torn Achilles, Huascar Ynoa just as he turned the corner and made an impact, Tucker Davidson and others. For every step forward, there were two backwards.
That puts Atlanta in a tough spot with just under three weeks before the trade deadline. The Braves won their third straight game on Saturday, hitting the 0.500 mark again at 44-44. They will start playing four games on Sunday behind the Mets in the NL East standings. The sale seems unlikely unless the team’s craters come out of the break, but would they really be buyers to try and support a list that, coming in on Sunday, didn’t spend a day above 0.500? and is now without his best player? This is the question that general manager Alex Anthopoulos will be asking himself in the coming weeks.
“I know Alex, as I’ve said a number of times, always tries to improve this club, whether it’s during the year, it’s during the offseason,” Snitker said of Anthopoulos. “He works tirelessly to help this club. I have complete confidence in him and whatever he decides to do, we will continue with it.
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