Acuna undergoing season-ending surgery on torn ACL

Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. will undergo season-ending surgery to repair a complete tear of his right ACL, the team announced Saturday.

Acuna was carted off the field after trying to make a leaping catch during Saturday’s game against the Miami Marlins.

The 23-year-old is expected to be out for 9-10 months, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN.

Acuna, one of the brightest young stars in baseball, was having another stellar season at the plate, batting .283/.394/.596 with 24 home runs, 52 RBIs, and 17 stolen bases in 82 games.

He was set to make his second All-Star Game appearance but has been replaced on the roster by San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado, according to Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The 44-44 Braves trail the NL East-leading New York Mets by four games.

Acuna suffers ankle injury, helped off field

Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. was helped off the field after suffering an ankle injury during the seventh inning of Thursday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Ronald Acuña Jr. hit the first-base bag wrong hustling out an infield single and he's down with an apparent ankle injury. pic.twitter.com/KNdnl5AFqP

— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) May 13, 2021

Braves manager Brian Snitker said X-rays on the ankle were negative and Acuna is day-to-day, according to The Athletic’s David O’Brien.

Acuna, who homered in the first inning of Thursday’s contest, leads MLB with 12 round-trippers and owns a .302/.399/.651 slash line with six steals.

Braves outfielder Cristian Pache also exited the game with hamstring tightness in the third inning. Pache will head to the injured list, according to O’Brien.

Acuna day-to-day with mild abdominal strain

The Atlanta Braves say Ronald Acuna Jr. had an MRI on Monday that revealed a mild abdominal strain and that the star outfielder is day-to-day heading into a series at Yankee Stadium beginning Tuesday.

Acuna was injured in the fourth inning of Atlanta’s 13-4 win over the Chicago Cubs on Sunday night. He led off the fourth inning with a walk, and pitcher Kyle Hendricks threw over a couple of times while he was on first. It looked as if Acuna did something to his midsection on a dive back to the bag.

The All-Star was checked by a trainer while he was on second, but he stayed in. He got up slowly after diving home to score on Travis d’Arnaud’s sacrifice fly, and then was replaced in the field in the bottom half.

Acuna is off to a terrific start this year, batting .419 with seven homers and 16 RBIs in 16 games. The outfielder also has scored a major league-high 21 runs. He was honored as the National League’s player of the week Monday.

The reigning NL East champions have been hit hard by injuries during a rough start to the season. Pitchers Max Fried, Drew Smyly and Sean Newcomb and outfielders Cristian Pache and Ender Inciarte have been placed on the 10-day IL since Wednesday.

Atlanta plays the Yankees in the Bronx on Tuesday and Wednesday before opening a home series against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday.

Flaherty tired of Acuna’s ‘antics’: ‘He can talk all he wants’

Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. had something to say to Jack Flaherty on Wednesday after the St. Louis Cardinals right-hander hit him with a pitch in the fifth inning of what was a 13-1 game.

Flaherty offered a response to Acuna’s complaints following the Cardinals’ series-clinching victory over the Braves.

“We’ve got two strikes on him, we were trying to go in,” Flaherty said, according to Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat. “If we’re gonna go in, we’re gonna go in tight. It hit him and he took exception to it. That’s the guy he wants to be, that’s how it is.

“He’s been having all his antics all series. The guy hits a ball off the wall, he gets a single out of it. So he wants to take exception to it? He can do whatever he wants. He can talk all he wants.”

Those “antics” came in Game 1 of the National League Division Series when Acuna slowly trotted to first base on a long fly ball he believed would be a home run. The ball ended up bouncing off the wall and Acuna managed just a single.

Acuna would homer in that contest when he took Cardinals closer Carlos Martinez deep in the ninth. Martinez took exception to the way Acuna rounded third base, saying postgame that “I simply want him to respect the game and respect me as a veteran player.”

After allowing three earned runs and blowing a save in Game 3, Martinez threw up-and-in on Acuna, who stared down the Cardinals pitcher and yelled at the team’s dugout after getting to first base.

St. Louis now shifts its focus to an NLCS showdown with the Washington Nationals.

“Series is over. It’s done with. We’re moving on,” Flaherty told reporters.

Braves’ Acuna doesn’t know who Mickey Mantle is: ‘I wasn’t even born’

Ronald Acuna Jr. became the youngest player in Major League Baseball history to hit a grand slam during the postseason with his second-inning blast against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday night.

At 20 years and 293 days old, Acuna broke a record held by Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle, who hit a playoff grand slam at the age of 21 years, 349 days, per ESPN Stats & Info.

Following the game, the Atlanta Braves phenom said he had never heard of Mantle, telling Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic, “I wasn’t even born.”

In fact, Mantle’s grand slam, which was hit in Game 5 of the 1953 World Series, happened more than 44 years and two months before Acuna was born.

Even further, Mantle’s last game, played in 1968, was played almost three full decades before Acuna’s birth.

In his rookie campaign, Acuna authored a remarkable .293/.366/.552 slash line with 26 home runs and 16 stolen bases. By comparison, Mantle’s 96-game rookie season yielded a .267/.349/.443 slash line with 13 homers and eight swiped bags.