Red Sox outfielder Franchy Cordero suffered a sprained ankle in the fifth inning of a 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday, but the injury initially looked like it could be much worse.

Cordero tracked a long fly ball by Rays outfielder Randy Arozarena deep into left field and tried to leap and catch it at the last second. But Cordero took an awkward angle and appeared to try to brace himself against the wall with his hands and his foot. The ball bounded off the wall, and Cordero bounced off, then crumpled to the ground. Kiké Hernandez ran over and got the ball back to the infield.

Here’s a look at the play.

Franchy Cordero had to be carted off the field after he collided in an awkward way with the left field wall. Hoping for the best 🙏 pic.twitter.com/QL29N75iF6

Arozarena’s double drove in Rays outfielder Jose Ciri, which trimmed the Red Sox’ lead at the time to 3-2.

Cordero stayed down and didn’t appear to be able to put any weight on his ankle. He was carted off the field and later diagnosed with an ankle sprain, despite plenty of speculation that the situation could have been far worse.

“Franchy, he’s OK,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters after the game. “He’s going to get an MRI tomorrow to see if there’s ligament damage. We doubt it. But of course, we have to wait and see. He’s sore, of course.”

Cordero added that Tropicana Field’s outfield grass made tracking the ball difficult.

“In this ballpark with the artificial grass you don’t feel the warning track, so you don’t know how close you are to the wall,” Cordero told reporters. “But so far the scans of everything have been negative. It’s just a sprained ankle.”

The broadcast later showed the wall where Cordero collided, which appeared to be torn up from his cleats.

Franchy Cordero caught his right leg in the wall trying to make the catch and is hobbling off with considerable difficulty. Looks like his cleats got jammed in there and he got twisted up. pic.twitter.com/U606Zli1LT

“That was bad,” Cora said. “I’m glad that he was able to get up and move around. You always go out there kind of thinking of the worse.”

Prior to his injury on Monday, Cordero was 0-for-2 with a pair of strikeouts. In August, he batted .261/.320/.753 with four homers in 25 plate appearances.

The Red Sox had won five consecutive games prior to Monday.

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