A few days before Max Muncy strained his oblique in May, the Dodgers infielder noticed a bruise on his chest.
At first, he didn’t pay it much mind.
“You look in the mirror and you’re like, ‘Oh I’ve got some weird bruises there. Maybe I took a weird hop on a ground ball in practice or something,’” Muncy recalled recently. “You really don’t even think about it.”
As it turned out, the contusion actually was an early clue in what became a three-month odyssey for Muncy, who languished on the injured list for most of the summer with perhaps the most confounding ailment of any Dodger this season.
When Muncy went on the IL on May 17, the Dodgers expected him to return in a matter of days.
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“I remember when it first happened,” manager Dave Roberts said, “we were even contemplating not even making it an IL.”
But as days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, Muncy’s discomfort never improved. His swing never felt right. And as his absence dragged on, he and the Dodgers medical staff started looking for other reasons the 33-year-old’s recovery was taking so long.
“I’d have a good day, and then I’d wake up and it’d feel like Day 1 of the injury,” Muncy said. “It was a whole process to get back to where I felt [OK] to even start to swing.”
Eventually, doctors discovered the root of Muncy’s issue: One of his bottom ribs was “out of place,” he said. And up until last month, it was starting to seem like it might cost the slugger the rest of his season.
“It was pretty severe,” Muncy said. “It didn’t feel like we were ever going to clear that hurdle.”
Now, however, all that is in the past. After a “chiropractic adjustment,” as Roberts termed it, late last month, Muncy’s rib finally was back into the correct spot. His lingering pain rapidly began to dissipate.
It culminated with his long-awaited activation this week, when he gave the Dodgers the kind of jolt they feared they’d be without for the stretch run: two home runs, two doubles and six RBIs in a three-game sweep of the Seattle Mariners.
Three months of uncertainty and despair, suddenly replaced by three electric days at the plate.
“I’d definitely say it’s unexpected,” Muncy said with a chuckle. “But it felt good. Just trying to keep things simple, and got some good results out there.”
The Dodgers’ new hope: that the saga proves to be a serendipitous turning point in their season, one of the rare injury subplots that might lead to a happy ending for both him and the team.
“To get back, hit the ground running, understand every play, every at-bat is important, and for him to pick us up … we’ve needed every bit of it,” Roberts said. “It’s just really good to have him.”
It didn’t take long for Muncy and the team to realize something was amiss when he was on the IL.
While scans showed he had an unusually bothersome oblique injury — he said in June it was affecting his entire core, rather one specific area — the stop-and-start nature of his recovery raised suspicions that something else was afflicting him.
While Muncy could take ground balls and complete other basic infield drills, any attempt to resume swinging resulted in one setback after another.
“I’d have two, three really good days of swinging, ball would be coming off hot, no pain in the swing at all, bat speed would be great, and then I’d wake up on the third or fourth day and it’d feel like Day 1 of the injury,” Muncy said. “We’d start back over and go back to the drawing board, see what was going on, go get more scans. That process obviously happened three or four times.”
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Early in that process, Muncy thought back to that bruise he had before he got hurt. And as his absence dragged on, the medical staff turned its attention to his rib cage, realizing that might be causing the delays in his recovery.
“My best guess is maybe the week leading up to when I got hurt, I dove for a ball or something and landed on it wrong, and we just didn’t know it at the time,” Muncy said. “We thought that maybe it was hurt before that day even happened.”
That led Muncy to begin making routine trips to a chiropractor, who made several attempts to get Muncy’s displaced rib back in the right position.
“It just wasn’t ever getting set properly,” Muncy said. “Each time I tried to come back, I felt like I was locked and couldn’t move properly.”
But then another trip to the chiropractor in late July resulted in a long-awaited breakthrough, with Muncy immediately feeling relief in the area that had bothered him for so long. When asked how his chiropractor did it, Muncy laughed.
“I’d re-show you, but I can’t actually physically get my body in that position,” he said. “It kind of felt like they almost broke my rib, but they didn’t. But it almost felt like that’s what happened.”
The adjustment, coupled with a pain-relieving injection the following day, allowed Muncy to finally turn a corner. This time there were no setbacks or aggravations. He quickly progressed from swings in the cage, to live at-bats, to a weeklong rehab assignment with triple-A Oklahoma City. Then his monster week against a talented Mariners pitching staff.
“It felt like I was never even hurt,” Muncy said. “That’s why this whole process has been pretty fast once we got that going.”
The challenge will be carrying it on over the final five weeks of the season, with Muncy resuming his role as the Dodgers’ everyday third baseman while batting seventh in a suddenly deep batting order.
During his time on the IL, Muncy said he tried to maintain certain “cues” in his swing mechanics, mimicking his hand placement and foot position while at home watching the Dodgers. But his swing isn’t exactly the same as it was early in the season, when the ninth-year veteran flashed early improvements following disappointing 2022 and 2023 seasons.
“When I come back, it’s just second-nature to be thinking about that stuff,” Muncy said. “But at the same time you have to get your swing back. So it’s a little bit of both.”
If this week was any indication, he’s close to finding that balance. He homered Monday night on a hanging changeup over the plate, then went deep again Tuesday on a 95-mph fastball well above the strike zone.
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In Roberts’ eyes, however, Muncy’s biggest contribution might have been a bases-loaded, three-run double Wednesday — on a first-pitch slider up in the zone — that put the Dodgers’ 8-4 win out of reach.
As the manager noted, the knock allowed the team to stay away from key relievers like Michael Kopech in the later innings.
“That,” Roberts said, “has an exponential effect on our ballclub.”
Of course, the Dodgers would have preferred to get such contributions from Muncy all season. His extended absence contributed to a revolving door of replacements at third base, and the team’s seasonlong struggles to balance the lineup.
Getting him back, however, already is serving as a nice consolation.
“It was always in the back of my head … that, ‘Oh, what if this happens again?’” Muncy said. “But we’re definitely in the clear on that now. It’s a blessing to be back out here.”
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