ATLANTA — Jarred Kelenic has gone through enough reflection and change to admit this: In the past, he was far too attached to his identity as a baseball player. He did not realize it until a fractured foot took baseball from him.

And after the injury, Kelenic, now without baseball, looked at himself in the mirror.

“Well, now who am I?” he asked himself.

This question, and its answers, fueled Kelenic’s path forward toward the person, and subsequently the player, he sought to become. Kelenic fractured a foot, but created a new self — a life where baseball wouldn’t be his entire world.

“I tried to make a conscious effort to never let that happen again because I’m more (than) a baseball player,” Kelenic told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in front of the dugout at Truist Park recently. “I try to treat people the right way and I have a life to live, just like every single person that comes to these games, and the guys on this field. And so I tried to put in a conscious effort, and when I did that, I kind of found a little bit more happiness in just my daily life. And it allowed me to be a lot more free out here on the baseball field.”

On Monday, the Braves will begin a three-game series in Seattle — where Kelenic began his major league career and where he broke his foot. Kelenic, who debuted in 2021, spent parts of three seasons with the Mariners.

Kelenic vowed to treat this series as any other three games. “I’m gonna go out and compete the best I can,” he said. He loved his Mariners teammates. He said he “didn’t really have much of a relationship” with manager Scott Servais or president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, but didn’t have anything bad to say about either. His job solely was to play baseball.

More than anything, the 24-year-old Kelenic’s return to Seattle is an opportunity to realize his incredible growth since he debuted — as a person first, a player second. He has learned how to find good distractions and eliminate bad ones. With the help of a sports psychologist, he has adjusted his view of baseball.

And now, he’s much happier.

“It’s a big difference,” Kelenic said. “That didn’t just come overnight. It took time. There’s a lot of things that happened in my life that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for that kind of got thrown at me. I tried to handle it (with) what I thought was right in the moment. And there’s definitely things looking back on (it) that I wish I would’ve done differently, and there’s some things I look back that I would’ve done the same thing. But at the end of the day, onward, and life goes on. Try to apply everything that I’ve learned through the ups and the downs, and move on.”

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