What were the Braves thinking with Ronald Acuna Jr.?

.The Atlanta Braves avoided disaster when the MRI on Ronald Acuña’s Jr.’s Achilles came back as a calf strain. However, the entire situation still begs the question: what the hell were the Braves thinking?

Apparently, the right Achilles was bothering Acuña leading into Tuesday’s contest against the Royals. Of course, the kid from Venezuela who has to be drug off the field lobbied the staff to play.

“I think [the Achilles] definitely got worse today,” Acuña said through an interpreter, via Mark Bowman. “I told them yesterday and everybody said take today off. But I’ve just missed so much time with injuries, and I didn’t want to miss any more time.”

First of all, Acuña needs to recognize that he’s gone through two major injuries and isn’t pushing through a bone bruise or a tweaked hamstring. This is your Achilles, something that, in the worst-case scenario, can ruin careers. He’s got to have better self-control, but it shouldn’t have been up to Acuña anyway.

The Braves training staff… what the hell are we doing? ‘Everybody said take the day off’ isn’t enough. They should’ve insisted, no, they should’ve demanded that Ronald Acuña sit out for a few games or until the Achilles wasn’t bothering him anymore. Saving a player from himself is necessary in these situations, especially a player who would rather die on the field in a meaningless July game than sit out.

Then, finally, we get to Brian Snitker, who was surely aware of everything that transpired between Acuña and the training staff. The Braves manager knows better than anyone who Acuña is at his core, what he means to this franchise, and that this season is already lost.

There was no excuse for Ronald Acuña to be out there on Tuesday night. He is the face of the franchise. Hell, he’s the face of Atlanta sports, a commodity that is worth about a billion dollars. For him to be playing while nursing an Achilles injury in a game that has no impact on the Braves’ postseason chances is nothing short of malpractice. How nobody raised their hand and said this is a terrible idea is mind-boggling.

The Braves, a once model organization for the rest of the league, continue to make head-scratching decision after head-scratching decision. They are lucky this injury didn’t turn out to be something much worse, or this debacle would have been a much bigger story on a national stage.