With his cap over his heart, Ronny Mauricio was having a difficult time reeling in his emotions while the national anthem played on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.
The New York Mets’ infielder had waited 611 days for his next opportunity to play in a major-league game, his journey toward cementing a place in the show having been undone by a torn ACL he suffered in December of 2023 while playing Winter Ball.
The repaired area took much longer than expected to heal, as inflammation in the knee prompted a second procedure to remove built-up scar tissue in August. His rehab assignment did not end until last month, and even that did not guarantee that this was the same Mauricio who was hitting 117-mph lasers during his 26-game big-league debut in September of 2023.
It only took two weeks for the 24-year-old to prove that he was back to full strength, as he slashed .515/.564/.818 (1.382 OPS) with three home runs, eight RBI, and four stolen bases with Triple-A Syracuse. When Mets third baseman and DH Mark Vientos went down with a hamstring injury on Monday night in Los Angeles, Mauricio was on the plane a few hours later to join the big club, where he started Tuesday night’s game at third base.
“It’s a long process,” Mauricio said. “I think it’s the hardest test in my career, but it’s helped me a lot to learn about my body and everything I do, the hard work, everything. You learn a lot. I’m a better person, a better player [because of it]. This process gave me a lot of tools to take [forward]… I’m feeling great. I’m feeling like I’m the same person I was before my surgery.”
Mauricio used some of the free time that came with rehabbing to learn English, taking classes twice a week, which he showed off while speaking with reporters postgame with the help of interpreter Alan Suriel.
“It was frustrating. Any professional athlete that goes through this type of process that I went through has a lot of difficult moments,” Mauricio said. “It’s a lot of moments of, when you’re down, there are some days when you’re up. What I think the year off did for me, it helped in ways because I was able to focus more on my body, my abilities as a person, improve on my English. That time away helped me out in a multitude of ways.”
With his most challenging chapter yet closed, Mauricio will now get the chance to make good on those initial expectations two years ago that he can stick in the majors. He went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in his season debut, in which he whiffed badly at a looping Clayton Kershaw curveball.
It is one of the most glaring weaknesses of his game, but it is a necessary shortcoming to contend with, considering the power his bat possesses.
“We understand [the swings and misses are] an area where he needs to improve,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said (h/t The Athletic). “We’ll see him chase, especially with how good the pitching is here at the big-league level. That’s why I am saying we have to be patient with him. We also know that there’s impact there, and he’s going to be aggressive. That’s part of what makes him who he is. He’s going to go out there and he’s going to hack.”
