The Los Angeles Dodgers had a major injury scare on Thursday night in their series finale against the Arizona Diamondbacks when Max Muncy collided with Ildemaro Vargas at first base.
Both players had to exit the game after being down on the field for a few minutes and getting checked on by trainers. The Dodgers announced Muncy left the game due to shortness of breath and to be evaluated for a potential concussion.
“A little banged up, but I’ll be alright,” Muncy said on SportsNet LA.
The Dodgers ruled out a concussion with their initial testing, which was encouraging. “They went through the concussion protocol and then kind of just treated him up, but Max seems pretty with it right now,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
After the collision, Muncy was seen with blood on his nose, and he guessed it was due to his glasses cutting it. As for the shortness of breath, Muncy wasn’t sure what the cause was.
“I don’t know if some part of him got me in the stomach or not,” he said. “But yeah, I mean, it’s just a big collision, and hopefully he’s doing alright.”
Muncy added, “Once I was able to kind of get my breath back, then I was able to get off the field. But we’re doing OK right now.”
Roberts shared that Muncy will be out of the lineup on Friday, which was planned already anyways, and he expects the third baseman to be available in the following games.
“It was pretty violent,” Roberts said. “And I think that from the testing that we did, sore nose, hit his nose, there was some blood on his nose. He said he had some clarity once he got up, got into the clubhouse.
“He’ll be down tomorrow, which we intended anyway. But I think that he’ll be available over the weekend, so I think we dodged one there.”
Max Muncy explains running into Ildemaro Vargas
The collision was set up by both Muncy and Vargas running toward first base, attempting to reach the bag first. The impact between them happened on the base as both players made a jump in an attempt to avoid each other.
“It was as I stepped on the bag,” Muncy said. “I kind of jumped up to de-weight myself and hopefully not make it as bad of a collision. It looked like he did the same thing, and we ended up just colliding in air.”
Muncy shared from his point of view as he was running down the line, he thought Vargas would stay in foul territory.
“Looking back at it now after seeing it, yeah, I wish I would have just stayed on the right side of the bag, and he would have came across,” Muncy said. “And then hopefully nothing would have happened then.
“But again, as I was running down the line, I saw him in foul territory, and so I thought he would stay on that side, and obviously I was wrong. When I looked at the replay, it looked like we both kind of did the same thing, where we both jumped to almost de-weight ourselves and avoid it. Unfortunately, we did not avoid it.
“Again, most importantly, though, I hope he’s doing OK. I definitely did not mean to run into him. It just happened, and hopefully he’s doing all right.”
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