3:17pm: The specific reason for Profar’s surgery will be to repair a torn labrum, tweets Andro.
2:58pm: Rangers top prospect Jurickson Profar, who missed the entire 2014 season after twice tearing a muscle in his shoulder, will undergo right shoulder surgery on Monday, tweets Anthony Andro of FOX Sports Southwest. As MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan writes, Profar had previously been throwing from 105 feet without any major discomfort and undergoing an MRI every three weeks to monitor his progress. His most recent MRI, however, showed increased strain on his subscapular muscle, prompting the decision for surgery.
The Rangers will not announce a timetable for recovery until the procedure has been completed, Sullivan notes, but Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News tweets that his expectation is for Profar to miss the entirety of the 2015 season. Grant also notes that doctors recommended surgery for Profar as far back as September.
Profar ranked as the consensus No. 1 prospect in baseball heading into the 2013 season, receiving that distinction from Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com and ESPN’s Keith Law. He made his debut as a 20-year-old that season and homered in his first big league plate appearance, though he went on to struggle, relatively speaking, to a .234/.308/.366 batting line in 324 plate appearances that season. (That line, of course, is likely more than most 20-year-olds could muster at the MLB level.)
News of another likely serious injury is of course a crushing blow to the Rangers, their fans and Profar himself. However, Profar is still quite young, as he’ll turn 22 years of age tomorrow. In other words, despite being two years removed from ranking as the game’s top prospect, he’s still more than a year younger than Kris Bryant, who many believe to be baseball’s current top prospect. There’s plenty of time for Profar to recover and go onto a meaningful career, but it’s nonetheless troublesome to see injury problems of this extent at such a young age.
With Profar out of the picture and Luis Sardinas traded to the Brewers, the quartet of young middle infielders the Rangers had has now been reduced to Elvis Andrus, who will again man shortstop, and Rougned Odor, who will now likely fill the second base role unchallenged in 2015.
