Outfielder Ronald Acuna, reliever Chris Martin and third baseman Austin Riley are ready for the Braves' first postseason series, manager Brian Snitker said Tuesday. The Braves host the Reds in a best-of-three wild-card round beginning Wednesday at Truist Park.
Acuna was a late scratch Sunday after experiencing irritation in is left wrist. It was the same wrist that kept him out for two weeks in August. The 22-year-old All-Star acknowledged Tuesday that the irritation has lingered since he first experienced it in New York on Aug. 11.
“I wouldn’t say it’s worried me," Acuna said via team interpreter Franco Garcia. "To be completely honest, I’ve felt the lingering effect of the wrist the entire time. It’s not something that’s unbearable or painful or anything like that. It’s something that I can notice and feel lingering. To me, it’s more of a mental aspect, something you can tolerate and need to push through. You can’t let it affect you or your play.
"I don’t think that it’s anything severe in that sense. It’s just something I know is there and that I feel a little bit, but nothing that would sideline me or anything like that.”
Sniker added, when confirming Acuna would play: “He didn’t have anything that was going to prohibit him from leading off tomorrow and being good to go. He’ll probably hit in the cage today, I’m not 100 percent sure, and we probably won’t get on the field (because of rain) so I’m glad we had the workout yesterday. Everybody showed up and we had a regular batting practice and the whole thing.”
Acuna finished the season hitting .250/.406/.581 with 14 homers, 29 RBIs and 46 runs scored in 46 games. This will be his third postseason series, and he’ll try to replicate the individual success of last year’s National League Division Series against the Cardinals, when he was 8-for-18 (.444) with three doubles, a homer and two RBIs.
Martin, meanwhile, provided a scare Sunday when he asked out of the game because of discomfort in his right groin after he had thrown only four pitches. The team considered him day-to-day.
When Martin arrived for workouts Monday, he felt better than expected, Snitker said. He’ll be on the wild-card roster and available Wednesday, which is a huge development for the Braves. Martin was the statistically best pitcher in a deep bullpen, posting a 1.00 ERA with a 20:3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 18 innings.
“He’s going to be ready to go tomorrow,” Snitker said. “When he came in yesterday, I think he was surprised how good he felt. I’m glad he said something because if he had stayed out there, it might’ve been something really bad. He’s done it before and all so he knows what it is. It’s good that we got him out of there and had a couple days to treat him. Coming in yesterday, he told (trainer) George (Poulis) that it was really good.”
Riley won’t be 100 percent, Snitker said, but he feels good enough to play. The slugger missed four of the team’s last five games with quadriceps tightness, and with the Braves having already locked up the NL East, the team felt it was best for Riley to get extra rest and treatment in the waning days of the regular season.
“He’s been hitting every day,” Snitker said. “I don’t know that he’ll be completely 100 percent when we start the games tomorrow, but he’ll be good enough to go.”
Riley had an up-and-down season, hitting .239/.301/.415 with eight homers and 27 RBIs. He again proved to be a streaky player, though some of his improvement at the plate wasn’t reflected in his stats. The dropoff from Riley to whomever the Braves would start at third base in his absence – Adeiny Hechavarria, Pablo Sandoval, maybe even Johan Camargo – is sizable.
Notes from Tuesday:
- Snitker confirmed the Braves' rotation order as Max Fried, Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright. He’s hopeful that Anderson and Wright (if Game 3 is necessary) can cover five or so innings, but he stressed it’s not a death sentence if they can’t.
“I’m hoping we’ll get that,” Snitker said. “If we don’t – I was hoping we’d get four, five, six innings every night the last two months. Didn’t work out that way all the time. If it doesn’t, we’ll adjust, adapt and go from there. I’d love to think we can do that. Do we have to? No. We have a deep bullpen, too. But you’d sure like to get those out of your starters. Will we push to get that? Probably not, depending on the situation.”
- Again asked about Freddie Freeman’s and Marcell Ozuna’s MVP candidacies, Snitker said: “I’d give it to both of them. I think both of them are extremely deserving. I think it’d be OK to have two of them, have co-MVPs.”
Freeman and Ozuna combined to hit .340 with 31 homers and 109 RBIs this season. Now, the Braves will hope their 2020 version of the bash brothers can find similar success in the postseason.
- The Braves and Reds haven’t seen each other since August 2019, when they split four games at Truist Park. Before that, they played in Cincinnati in April 2019. There isn’t much familiarity in this series, which could favor the pitchers.
“Probably the pitchers (have an advantage), if anything,” Snitker said. “When you see somebody for the first time, I think the edge goes to pitchers. You can watch video, but until you stand in the box with them, you have to see them to know what it is.”
The pitching matchups will be Fried vs. Trevor Bauer in Game 1, Anderson vs. Luis Castillo in Game 2, and Wright vs. Sonny Gray in a winner-take-all Game 3, if necessary.
