Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte left Tuesday night’s game against the Nationals after four innings due to left-thumb soreness.
Manager Brian Snitker said Inciarte would be evaluated again tomorrow and probably want to play, but indicated he’d keep him out of the lineup at least one day.
Inciarte jammed his left thumb into first base while sliding as he tried to avoid a tag Sept. 12 at Washington. He finished that game but missed one start the next day but started the past five games.
“It’s still a residual effect of sliding into first,” Snitker said. “You take BP (batting practice) and all that kind of stuff, things don’t heal in a day.”
It appeared Inciarte might’ve aggravated the thumb when he got jammed on an inside pitch during his fourth-inning at-bat. Snitker wasn’t sure if that was the case.
“He’s just sore. His thumb’s still sore,” Snitker said. “He’d been kind of playing through it and I think he got to a point where we were going to have to back off a little bit. It’s nothing serious, there’s no structural damage or anything, it’s just sore.
“We’ll see where he is tomorrow. Knowing him, he’ll be wanting to play tomorrow, but I’ll probably give him a day just to calm things down.”
Inciarte struck out and grounded out in two plate appearances Tuesday. He needs 10 hits to become only the fourth different Brave to have a 200-hit season since the team moved to Atlanta in 1966 and the first to do it since Marquis Grissom had 207 in 1996.
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