The Atlanta Braves' nightmarish 2025 season hit a whole new rock bottom on Tuesday night, when star outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. was forced to leave the team's game against the Kansas City Royals with what was quickly diagnosed as an Achilles injury. (The fact that Acuña had first expressed discomfort in the area a full day prior, and was allowed to take the field anyway, just adds insult to a potentially devastating injury.)
Any time an Achilles is involved, it's understandable to fear the worst; a tear is probably the most devastating injury a professional athlete can suffer, both in terms of rehab time and how it affects performance even after recovery. To be clear, it's too early to assume that's what Acuña is dealing with here, given that he still has to undergo further testing to determine the extent of the problem. Based on the former NL MVP's response in the aftermath, though, it's hard to get that thought out of your head.
"It's an injury; I'm worried," Acuña told reporters after the game. "It's more pain, but it feels kind of, I feel it a lot when I try to put pressure on it."
That certainly doesn't seem great. And Acuña's response on Instagram didn't inspire any more confidence, turning his Instagram profile photo to a black background with the word "desconectado" (which roughly translates to "offline").
Again, we don't know what we don't know. It's possible Atlanta dodged a bullet here, and Acuña has just suffered a strain or tendonitis or something that can be treated with rest and recovery down the stretch of a lost season. But the alternative is seeming more and more likely right now, and that's terrifying to contemplate.
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Worst-case scenario for Ronald Acuña Jr. injury could alter the Braves' trajectory for good
If Acuña's worst fears are realized and this is indeed an Achilles tear, it's hard to overstate the devastating impact this would have on the Braves moving forward. The outfielder would be out until at least the second half of next season, and it's unclear whether he'd be able to make it back in 2026 at all — or what he'll look like when he does. We've seen athletes across sports struggle to look like themselves for a while even after they've returned to the field, and this would be yet another major surgery on top of two torn ACLs in the last five years.
For a Braves team that still very much intends on competing for an NL East title in 2026, that would obviously be a huge gap to have to fill. Would the team enter the bidding for a star outfielder like, say, Kyle Tucker? Would Liberty Media's fear of entering the luxury tax even allow for that possibility to be entertained?
And what would that mean for Acuña's long-term future with the team? At this point, it's getting harder and harder to see him as a full-time outfielder moving forward, given the toll the position has taken on his body. Atlanta needs to do whatever it takes to keep him on the field, even if it's using him at DH after the inevitable departure of Marcell Ozuna. But then, that would seemingly short-circuit much of the appeal of the team's catching tandem of Sean Murphy and Drake Baldwin, one of whom would need to be riding the bench to make room for Acuña in the lineup.
We're getting very far ahead of ourselves here. But it's hard not to when this is how Acuña himself is responding to the injury, and when the Braves aren't giving fans much of anything else to hang their hopes on moving forward. Acuña's return to superstardom was one of the only bright spots amid a miserable few months, and now even that has been cruelly ripped away. For how long, no one knows just yet.