Kai Wagner is likely to miss his second straight game with an abdominal injury

Though it won’t be official until the weekend, Union manager Bradley Carnell gave a pretty strong signal Thursday that Kai Wagner’s abdominal injury will keep him out of Saturday’s game against Orlando City at Subaru Park (7:30 p.m., Apple TV).

Wagner didn’t play in last Saturday’s 2-1 loss at Inter Miami after leaving practice early the Thursday before. The veteran left back was listed as questionable on the injury report for that game.

“I think it’s still questionable,” Carnell said in his weekly news conference. “We don’t want to push anything and then get delayed by multiple weeks. Right now, I think in the next, sort of, 24 hours, we’ll know if he can be eligible for this weekend, but I don’t think so.”

By now, Union fans have realized that Carnell doesn’t give much away when talking about injuries. But he acknowledged that Wagner’s ailment might have been brewing slowly for a while instead of being caused by a single incident in a game or practice.

“I think every player, over multiple weeks, has something going on — a knock, a bruise, or something,” Carnell said. “It could be a progression of something that led to something more serious. It’s not like it was not on the radar. We did assume something, he was monitoring something, and unfortunately in training, yes, that’s when [the flare-up] happened.”

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Wagner is improving, with Carnell saying of his recovery: “He’s doing OK. I think every day, he’s a couple percent more.”

For now, expect Frankie Westfield and Nathan Harriel to be the starting outside backs again Saturday, as they were in the last game.

Union striker Tai Baribo won MLS’s first Player of the Month award of the season, encompassing March and the bit of February when the campaign kicked off.

The national media panel honored him for being the league’s top scorer so far, with six goals through five games.

It’s the first time a Union player has been Player of the Month since 2013, when Jack McInerney won it in April and May of that year. The only other Union player to earn the honor was Sébastien Le Toux in September 2011.

Baribo’s competition for the award included Downingtown-born goalkeeper Zack Steffen of the Colorado Rapids, who started the year with a 3-0-2 record in regular-season games. He has allowed just four goals and made 27 saves across those contests.