Atlanta Braves Taking It Easy With Injury To Andrelton Simmons

One full squad practice in for the Atlanta Braves = one top star injured.

News broke Thursday afternoon that Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons has a sore/strained left oblique muscle.

Simmons had this same injury when he was first trying to make the Braves roster in 2012 during the end of Spring Training without playing ball above the Class A Advanced league.  He suffered the oblique strain and the Braves sent him back to the minors.  He showed his caliber of play in Mississippi and Tyler Pastornicky showed he wasn’t able to control the Braves shortstop position and the Braves gave Simmons a call…the rest is history.

On Thursday, Simmons took some ground balls, stretched and ran a little with the rest of the team but didn’t do anything throwing or hitting.

Here is a video Braves beat writer David O’Brien posted with Simmons taking some grounders.

Last year, Simmons had a down season at the plate and is encouraged to change that this season.  In years past, if he had an injury he would keep quiet to stay in the lineup but this morning he walked straight into Braves Manager Fredi Gonzalez‘s office and told him about his oblique.  He said he felt the strain after a batting practice session about two weeks ago and then he aggravated it again last week during workouts.  Fredi and Simmons both agreed they just wanted to be cautions with this.

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“The past couple of years, they’ve had trouble with me staying in the trainer’s room and just taking my rest,” Simmons told the media on Thursday.  “I want to be out there.  I like being out there taking ground balls and diving and hitting.  So I’m trying to learn to be patient.”

Being patient with something like this is very smart, the Braves do not want to see this injury linger into the season….especially since this was the first official day of practice.

The Braves will probably take it easy with Simmons for the rest of this week and into next week and then he should be back to full workouts by this time next week.

“It feels pretty good right now,” Simmons said. “I’m just being cautious. It’s the first day of Spring Training. I’m just being cautious and trying to get it to 100 percent.  We’ll see how it feels tomorrow.  If it feels better we’ll start throwing and swinging and keep going, depending on how it feels.  But it shouldn’t be that long.  I don’t know how long, but it shouldn’t be that long.”

Below is video of Simmons talking to the media on Thursday afternoon…