On Thursday, word got out that the Atlanta Braves would be getting Ronald Acuña Jr. back from the injured list on Friday just in time for the Padres to come to town. Fans are understandably excited given that the Braves' offense has been so inconsistent this year and the energy level around the team as a whole has been lower. However, Acuña Jr.'s imminent arrival is a reminder of his botched return a couple years and the risks of bringing Acuña Jr. back too quickly.
Has Acuña Jr. looked good during his rehab? Absolutely. He has been crushing home runs, making loud contact, and (somewhat) running around just having a great time playing baseball again. There is no obvious reason to think that Acuña Jr. isn't ready to return and fans are certainly ready to have him back batting leadoff.
However, one just hopes that Acuña Jr.'s return goes differently than from his first surgery as the Braves can ill-afford him to have a setback.
Hopefully the Braves and Ronald Acuña Jr. took real lessons from his 2022 return
Back in 2022, we heard a lot of the similar things about Acuña Jr. that we are hearing right now. He "looked great", was progressing through his rehab quickly and checking all the boxes he needed to, and stayed in great shape. All of those things were true, but what Acuña Jr. and the Braves failed to do was account for the cumulative effects of the long baseball season on a guy and how much extra healing that needed to happen.
Again, the Braves didn't put Acuña Jr.'s long-term health in jeopardy by bringing him back when they did. What their aggressive rehab schedule DID do, however, was open Acuña Jr. to soreness in his surgically repaired knee that plagued him throughout the 2022 season and led to a pretty mediocre for him .266/.351/.413 line across 119 games. It was only after a regular offseason that Acuña Jr. would turn superhuman again.
What Braves fans have to hope is that the Braves learned a valuable lesson from that experience. His rehab was definitely longer this time at rough one year after having surgery versus the 10ish months it was last time. Every injury is different though and if the Braves aren't close to 100% sure that Acuna Jr. won't have soreness in his knee(s), they needed to wait until they were. The die is cast now, so we all just have to sit back and hope that everyone involved did the right thing here.