The Atlanta Braves will be without Marcell Ozuna for about six weeks after he fractured the middle and ring fingers on his left hand after jamming his hand into Rafael Devers’ foot on an attempted slide Tuesday night. Ozuna was sent back to Atlanta where tests revealed the extent of the injury.
Brian Snitker discussed Ozuna’s injury prior to Wednesday’s game and touched on where the Braves will go from here. He said that he was hoping for the best initially.
“I was hoping maybe they wouldn’t have found anything and he would have been in a couple days getting some swelling down and getting back out there, but he fractured his ring and middle finger and will be out around six weeks, Snitker said” “It’s a significant time to be without a big player on your team.”
“With hands, you just never know. That’s why they sent him back to Atlanta,” Snitker added. “You have to get the MRIs and CT scans just to make sure what’s going on and obviously they found the fractures. If there was a good thing, it’s that it is not a surgical process. They just cast him up and it’s gonna take time.”
Ozuna hasn’t been himself at the plate so far this season but had shown signs in recent days of coming around. He hit a rocket double to center on Tuesday that tied the game before suffering the injury on the next play.
Atlanta has been dealing with injuries in the outfield since the start of the season. Cristian Pache began the season as the team’s starting centerfielder but is currently on the injured list for the second time already. Guillermo Heredia and Ender Inciarte have also had IL stints. Snitker added that the news on Ozuna came so late that the team will wait until Thursday’s off day to make a roster move meaning they will play a man short on Wednesday.
“I think the off day tomorrow will give us a little leeway to kind of figure out what we’re going to do,” Snitker said. “We’ll just play with what we have tonight. We got the news and everything too late to do anything. It’s good that we’re playing a DH game so hopefully we won’t need the extra guys.”
How they will go about filling Ozuna’s roster spot remains to be seen. Atlanta currently has a full 40-man roster and only three true outfielders in Heredia, Inciarte and Acuña that are healthy although Ehire Adrianza has also seen some time in the outfield.
“We’ll figure it out,” Snitker said. “It’s going to be an opportunity for somebody to do something really good so we’ll just kind of regroup here and see what we got.”