{"id":685329,"date":"2026-04-28T22:18:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/685329\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T22:18:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:18:28","slug":"as-place-max-muncy-on-injured-list-due-to-broken-finger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/685329\/","title":{"rendered":"A’s Place Max Muncy On Injured List Due To Broken Finger"},"content":{"rendered":"

4:05pm: Muncy did indeed suffer his injury against the Rangers on April 13 and tried to play through it, per Mart\u00edn Gallegos of MLB.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4:00pm: The Athletics placed infielder Max Muncy<\/a> on the 10-day injured list due to a fractured fifth metacarpal in his left hand, per a team announcement. Fellow infielder Brett Harris<\/a> is up from Triple-A to take his place on the active roster.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Muncy \u2014 not to be confused with the unrelated Dodgers third baseman of the same name \u2014 was the Athletics\u2019 first-round pick in 2021 and has been their primary third baseman so far in 2026. He\u2019s out to a decent .239\/.308\/.402 start. Muncy has smacked a pair of homers, gone 2-for-3 in stolen base attempts, and added five doubles and a pair of triples. He\u2019s walked at a below-average 5.8% clip and struck out in an alarming 35.6% of his plate appearances. He\u2019s been a thorn in the side of left-handed pitching, in particular, tallying five extra-base hits and five walks in only 34 plate appearances against southpaws.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not entirely clear when Muncy suffered the injury, though his performance gives us a good clue. He had a mammoth showing in spring training (.380\/.466\/.800, five homers in 58 plate appearances) and sprinted out of the gates with a .317\/.349\/.533 showing in his first 63 trips to the plate during the regular season. Muncy was hit on the bands by a Nathan Eovaldi<\/a> pitch on April 13, and his bat his since gone in the tank. He\u2019s mired in an awful 3-for-32 stretch and has fanned 15 times in his past 41 turns at the plate. The original diagnosis at the time was a bruised left hand, but it\u2019s fairly common for swelling to obscure a fracture in the immediate aftermath of a hit-by-pitch.<\/p>\n

Muncy has yet to firmly cement himself as an everyday player in the big leagues and probably won\u2019t do so unless he\u2019s able to whittle down that sky-high strikeout rate. (He had a 34.9% strikeout rate even in that torrid stretch of 63 plate appearances to begin his season.) He knocked Triple-A pitching around at a hearty .325\/.397\/.504 clip in 141 plate appearances last year and has been consistently productive in the minors since reaching the Double-A level. Strikeouts haven\u2019t been a major issue in the upper minors \u2014 he\u2019s fanned at just a 23% clip in Triple-A \u2014 perhaps giving cause for optimism that he can eventually scale back his strikeouts in the majors.<\/p>\n

Even if Muncy doesn\u2019t settle in as a regular at the hot corner, there\u2019s enough pop in his bat and enough versatility in his defensive repertoire that he could profile as a utility option. He has experience at shortstop, third base and second base. Scouting reports have long pegged him as an adequate shortstop who could handle second or third if needed. His hit tool is below average, but he\u2019s generally credited with average power, if not slightly better. He\u2019s not a burner on the bases but has above-average speed, sitting in the 72nd percentile of big leaguers this season.<\/p>\n

The A\u2019s haven\u2019t provided a timetable, but a broken finger in the infielder\u2019s glove hand seems like it\u2019ll sideline him for more than a minimum stint. In the interim, the A\u2019s can go with a combination of Harris and Darell Hernaiz<\/a> at third base. They could also slide Jeff McNeil<\/a> over to the hot corner in order to clear some playing time at second base for Zack Gelof<\/a>, although the 26-year-old Gelof has struggled immensely since a promising rookie showing back in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4:05pm: Muncy did indeed suffer his injury against the Rangers on April 13 and tried to play through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,21619,35272,4,3226],"class_list":["post-685329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-athletics","tag-athletics","tag-baseball","tag-brett-harris","tag-max-muncy-2002","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-athletics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116484656709836176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}