Perfect timing for this discussion. An article came out today about a top MLB player that tore his ACL and the struggles he had overcoming it and getting back to the pre-injury player he was. He was a great player, tore his ACL, struggled his first season back, and now is back to 100% and elite in his 2nd season post-ACL surgery.
Just a few excerpts for people who dont want to read it:
- To Acuña, though, none of this feels like a given, not when those three years featured a devastating knee injury and a subpar return from it. Through it all, one of the most outwardly confident athletes of our time wondered if he'd ever be good again.
- ACUÑA RETURNED TO the Braves on April 28, 2022, and played in 119 of the team's remaining 143 regular-season games, plus four more in the playoffs -- but he was never truly himself.
Young, Acuña's coach through his entire major league career, noticed it in how slowly he cut off base hits in the gap. Austin Riley, Acuña's teammate dating to rookie ball, noticed it in the batting cage, where the ball didn't quite jump off his bat like it used to. Braves third-base coach Ron Washington, going on his sixth decade in the major leagues, noticed it in how infrequently his typical burst would arrive on the bases. Brian Snitker, his manager, noticed it in the deluge of reports from the training staff that detailed Acuña's constant need for treatment.
Acuña felt it everywhere -- when he didn't rotate his hips quickly enough to reach fastballs, when he didn't explode well enough to track down distant fly balls, when he didn't come out of his stride fast enough to steal bases.
"I put a lot of pressure on myself, like, 'I have to get back to being who I was before,' and I think that influenced a lot," Acuña said. "Things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. The knee -- there were days when it wouldn't hurt, I'd go out and play a hundred percent and I'd tell myself, 'I'm back,' but then the next day the pain would return. It just kept going like that."
- Inside, doubt consumed him.
"I would tell my mom, 'Mom, I don't know if I'll ever run the same again.' Or my dad, 'You think I'll go back to playing the same?'" Acuña said. "The pain was not easy. The operation also was not easy. So I doubted many times. I would tell my friends, 'I don't know if I'll be able to play that way again.' Every time I would go play, I doubted."
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