Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman react to the Atlanta Braves star’s season-ending ACL injury and how it’s a bummer for the baseball world. Listen to the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast — and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video transcript
That’s pretty much, as far as a baseball player getting hurt goes, a bummer scale.
That’s pretty high up there.
It’s very, very, very challenging to think and talk about this.
And is that Ronald Cooney Junior will no longer play baseball this season after tearing his left UCL, and in a truly strange way, uh, in this case, he was at second base in Pittsburgh on Sunday and it appears that essentially between pitches, he thought about take off for third or at least fake third or at least consider an aggressive baserunning maneuver.
But between pitches, it’s not during a play, it was on the catcher’s throwback to the pitcher on the catcher’s throwback, there are no defenders near him and he passes out and leaves the game.
And perhaps most importantly, as he leaves the game, the Braves announce at 2:18 pm ET that they say Ronald Coon Junior has been ruled out of today’s game due to left knee soreness.
Everyone watching this was like, well, it looked a little worse than pain, but we didn’t want to speculate too much.
Of course we all hope for the best.
And then last night the Braves just tweeted.
Bravo as you have done many times before 10pm.
Oriental Ronna Cunha.
This evening he underwent an MRI which revealed a complete tear in his left knee, which will have to be operated on in a match.
Still to be determined.
We will miss the rest of the 2024 season.
Oh, the fact that Ronald has to do it all over again on the other leg is a punch in the gut for him, because I mean, like we saw Ronald Acuna’s complete, unfettered dominance last year.
We got a taste of that and I think for Ronald to have that experience of being that player and now having to sit out another season is just devastating.
He said publicly that, you know, they won in ’21.
Yes, but he doesn’t feel like it counts for him as a whole ring because he didn’t play in October.
And then it sucks, man.
Ronald Acuna at his best is as good as this sport really is, you know, like when he’s just throwing balls into the opposite field, full steam ahead, swinging everything behind him and they, they just charge when he’s stealing a bag when he , when he is just being that, when he exists, Kun is special.
He is unique.
He’s captivating.
And I feel like I’m not saying I’m the victim, like we should all feel robbed by the baseball gods, for losing this and not just for losing this, but we were, we took it as we saw it. .
He did it last year and the idea that it will be a long time before we can do it again.
Or he may never be that again if he never comes back.
The list of guys with surgeries, total surgeries, on both legs is pretty short, right?
That’s not a particularly encouraging medical scenario, right?
So I feel for all the people, like Braves fans, specifically who this guy is and they can’t see the guy being the guy for a long time.
