After months of rehab, the light at the end of the injury recovery tunnel is in sight for Ronald Acuña Jr.
The Atlanta Braves star has been out since tearing his ACL on July 10th and having surgery later in the month last season, a campaign in which Atlanta won the World Series.
We’re right near the nine-month mark of the injury, and it has been known that some point in May was the target timeframe for Acuña to return to game action.
But during an appearance on the “Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney” podcast, Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos clearly outlined the timeline for the 24-year-old.
“So we are shooting for the first week of May," Anthopoulos said. "We have a few road games against the Mets and then we have an off day and then I think we open up against the Brewers on the sixth. So, we're hopeful, optimistic, again we're still pretty far out, but we've been shooting for that Brewers series and we'll just see how he feels and how he's recovering. You try to map things out, we're hoping we'll get him to a Triple-A rehab assignment the week of Monday, April 25th, and then it's the matter of reps and at-bats and innings in the outfield and all those things. And then when he does come back, we're not certain exactly how his body is going to respond in recovery.
“He'll be able to play the outfield, we just don't know will it be two days in a row, will it be one day in a row then two days DHing, we're just going to have to slowly build him up. He'll be at the nine-month on April 21st, which we're not doing anything prior to that time. But I think once we get to the 10-month mark and so on, hopefully around the All-Star break or beginning of July we'll be well past any concerns and he should be full-go. but we do expect him back the first week of May, it's just a matter of how we're going to split up his time in the outfield and DH”
Getting Acuña back will be a nice boost for a Braves team looking to defend their title in 2022. In the interim, Acuna will be defending himself after comments he made on an Instagram Live about Freddie Freeman.
Related
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram