JUST NOW: Ronald Acuña Jr announces the leaving of his football career due to…
Replacing Ronald Acuña, Jr. for the rest of this baseball season could prove the most formidable challenge ever faced by the Atlanta Braves since they became a post-season contender in 2018.
Entering this season, the team was widely considered likely to extend its best-in-baseball streak of six consecutive division titles. But that was before Atlanta lost its best pitcher (strikeout king Spencer Strider) and its best position player (defending MVP Acuña) early in the campaign.
That double whammy could be considered the National League equivalent of the New York Yankees facing season-ending injuries to defending Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole and former MVP Aaron Judge.
Strider fell first, making only two starts before requiring surgical repair of his right elbow. Then Acuña tore his left ACL while running the bases on May 27.
This is not the first time Atlanta’s 26-year-old right-fielder has suffered a season-ending injury before the All-Star Game.
It also happened in 2021, when he tore his right ACL while trying to catch a Jazz Chisholm liner in the outfield.
Because that mishap occurred just weeks before the trade deadline, Alex Anthopoulos was able to raid the rosters of non-contenders to patch up his outfield. Atlanta’s president of baseball operations added Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, Eddie Rosario, and Jorge Soler, a quartet of outfielders who not only replaced Acuna but pushed the Braves all the way to a world championship.
It won’t be so easy this time, since the July 30 trade deadline is still more than a month away and so many teams think they can reach the expanded playoffs that nobody wants to make trades now.
