Austin Riley’s broken right hand will keep him out of the playoffs if the Atlanta Braves make it that far.
A CT scan on Monday showed that the third baseman’s injury has not healed enough.
“It just wasn’t healing enough to think that he could come back this year,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said on Tuesday.
Riley was struck by a 97 mph fastball from Jack Kochanowicz of the Los Angeles Angels on August 18. He was expected to miss the rest of the regular season, but there was some hope that if the Braves went deep into the playoffs, he might be able to return.
“He’s still in a cast, so realistically, it was going to be pretty tough for him,” Snitker said. “We’d have to go pretty deep in the playoffs. It is not where the doctors wanted it to be.”
As the final week of the season approached, the Braves were 1.5 games behind Arizona for the third NL wild card spot.
Riley had 19 home runs, 56 RBIs, and a .256 batting average in 110 games, following a season where he hit 37 home runs and drove in 97 runs. The two-time All-Star had averaged 159 games in the previous three seasons.
Snitker mentioned that Riley is expected to be fully healed before spring training.
Third baseman Gio Urshela, who was released by the Tigers on the same day Riley was injured, was signed by the Braves and has a batting average of .270 with three home runs in 30 games for Atlanta.
