The best team in baseball will be without its biggest star for a few weeks.
The Braves placed Ronald Acuña Jr. on the injured list Sunday with a strained left hamstring. Acuña exited Saturday’s game after pulling up in considerable pain while running out a groundout. Manager Walt Weiss told reporters that imaging revealed a Grade 1 strain, the least severe grade. According to MLB.com, Weiss said:
“It’s not going to be just a couple days. It’s gonna be more than that, so we need to put him on the IL, and hopefully it’ll be sooner than later. No idea with these soft tissue injuries how long they’re gonna take, but I think the silver lining is that the MRI showed it wasn’t too serious.”
While many players return from Grade 1 hamstring strains in just a couple weeks, or even following the 10-day minimum, this is an injury that can linger and delay a return.
This is, obviously, less than ideal for the Braves. Acuña is their best player and was projected in the preseason as the ninth-best position player in baseball with 5.4 WAR, according to our Depth Charts. Though his performance hasn’t been spectacular thus far, with a 111 wRC+ in 152 plate appearances, his .381 xwOBA and 12.2% barrel rate — along with strong strikeout and walk rates — suggest he hasn’t missed a beat this year, coming off his bounce-back 2025 season.
Of course, last year was a comeback campaign because Acuña missed most 2024 (and the early part of 2025) after tearing his ACL. He also missed chunks of 2021 and 2022 with a torn ACL in his other knee. In 2018, he missed about a month with a mild ACL sprain. That means Acuña’s hamstring strain is his fourth lower body injury requiring IL time in his career.
To replace Acuña on the active roster, the Braves called up speedy outfielder José Azocar, who has a 74 wRC+ in parts of four seasons in the majors. Azocar likely won’t play a bunch, as the Braves are expected to platoon Mike Yastrzemski and Eli White in Acuña’s absence. But center fielder Michael Harris II has missed three of the last four games with a quad injury, so depending on what happens, Azocar may be thrust into more playing time than expected.
The Braves have dealt with a rash of injuries in the early season, mostly in their pitching staff. They did get a key piece back on Sunday, when Spencer Strider returned from an oblique injury (though his outing didn’t go particularly well). But with Acuña out, the Braves have 12 players on the IL.
Still, the start of the season has been nothing short of a tremendous success for Atlanta, as Jay Jaffe outlined last week. At 25-10, the Braves not only boast the best record in the majors, they also have the best run differential. While a brief Acuña absence might pose a challenge, they sit comfortably atop the NL East.
Cal Raleigh, Ben Rice Sit for a Bit
The Braves head to Seattle on Monday to face the Mariners, who may or may not be without one of their top players.
Cal Raleigh was a late scratch for Saturday’s game with what was described as “general soreness.” Before Sunday’s game, he told reporters he was dealing with a bit of pain in his core. The issue began Friday, though he said there wasn’t necessarily a specific play that triggered it. So far, Raleigh has not been placed on the injured list; the Mariners called up catcher Jhonny Pereda for the time being.
After struggling out the gate in 2026, Raleigh has picked it up with five homers over his last 10 games. Unlike the Braves, the Mariners aren’t quite in a position to merely stay afloat without one of their top players. They entered the season as favorites in the American League by our Playoff Odds, but after getting swept by the Royals, they sit at 16-19. The good news for the Mariners is the rest of the AL West remains uninspired, and we still give them the second-best odds in the AL to win the World Series. But as I noted in the preseason, Seattle’s success relies quite a bit on Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez being healthy and productive.
Leap-frogging the Mariners for the best odds to win the American League are the Yankees, who also happen to have a star slugger temporarily sidelined. Ben Rice is listed as day-to-day with a bruise on his hand. The injury occurred while receiving a pickoff attempt from Max Fried in the third inning on Sunday. The ball appeared to catch him awkwardly square in the palm, where the padding on his glove is quite thin.
Before the injury, Rice smacked his 12th homer of the year in the first inning. After the injury, he hit a popup that landed in no-man’s land for a double in the fourth. He was removed when the Yankees took the field in the fifth. The two extra-base hits gave him a major league-leading 224 wRC+.
Aces Down
A trio of top pitchers also went down over the weekend.
Twins ace Joe Ryan left Sunday’s start with elbow soreness after facing just two batters. He struck out the first, walked the second, then signaled to the bench.
Ryan’s fastball velocity has been down to begin the season, from 93.7 mph last year to 92.6 mph. That drop hasn’t seemed to affect him much, as he’d entered the day with a 2.99 FIP in seven starts, making him one of the top 15 starters by WAR. The last fastball he threw Sunday, however, was at 90.9 mph.
It’s unclear the extent of the injury, though it’s presumed to require a trip to the IL at the minimum. Ryan will get imaging this week. If he returns healthy, he’s expected to be one of the most sought-after players at the trade deadline.
Brewers flamethrower Jacob Misiorowski was removed from his start on Friday with a hamstring injury. He’d thrown 5 1/3 hitless innings with eight strikeouts against the Nationals. He’d also unleashed 43 pitches 100 mph or faster, just four shy of Hunter Greene’s single-game record of 47. And then he threw a 98.9-mph fastball before leaving the game with trainers.
Misiorowski said he felt the discomfort from the start of the sixth inning. Per the Associated Press:
“Probably about the last warmup pitch and then that whole first batter I had it,” Misiorowski said. “It didn’t really get terrible until that first pitch to [James] Wood, and then it really grabbed. One of those things.”
Misiorowski is not set to have any imaging done, and the Brewers believe he avoided serious injury. He is day-to-day.
Red Sox lefty Ranger Suarez also hopes to have avoided a serious hamstring injury. He exited his start Sunday after the fourth inning, with his pitch count at 70. Suarez was throwing a shutout and cruising through the Astros lineup, then simply didn’t return to the mound to begin the fifth.
He said after the game it was tightness in his right hamstring. He also missed time in 2023 with a right hamstring injury, though he said this time feels different. He’s optimistic he won’t need to be placed on the IL.
The Red Sox certainly hope that’s the case. They entered the season with one of the best rotations in the majors and have since lost their top two starters in Garrett Crochet (shoulder inflammation) and Sonny Gray (hamstring strain). Gray is expected to return after a minimum stay on the IL, but losing any more time from their frontline starters will make climbing out of their hole in the AL East more difficult.
Veteran Starters on the Shelf
The Brewers placed Brandon Woodruff on the injured list with shoulder inflammation on Friday, a day after he left his start in the second inning, with his fastball averaging just 85 mph — more than 7 mph below his average from last year. He told reporters there’s nothing structurally wrong with his shoulder and expects a minimum stay on the IL.
The Angels placed Yusei Kikuchi on the injured list Sunday with shoulder inflammation, stemming from his start Wednesday, which he exited after just two innings. His 3.73 FIP (despite a 5.81 ERA) so far this year is an improvement from his first season in Anaheim, helping the Angels boast a surprising top-five starting rotation by WAR so far in 2026. The team has not yet offered a timeline for his return.
Editor’s note: This story was filed before news broke that two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal will undergo surgery in his left elbow to remove loose bodies. We will be covering that injury is a separate piece on Tuesday.
* This article was originally published here
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