Recent Twins first-round draft pick Alex Kirilloff will undergo Tommy John surgery in about a week, per a team announcement (h/t Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, via Twitter). That will cost the outfielder all of the 2017 campaign.
That’s an unfortunate development for the 19-year-old, who’ll lose a year of development opportunities. Of course, given that he’s not a pitcher, it’s somewhat less concerning in regards to his long-term outlook.
Kirilloff, who was taken 15th overall in last summer’s draft, seemingly suffered the injury late last summer. He was shut down and rested all winter, but obviously was still dealing with issues as camp opened.
Minnesota will still look forward to a future contribution from Kirilloff, who was a long way from the majors before today’s news. He had shown quite well at the Rookie level last year, posting a solid .306/.341/.454 batting line with seven home runs over 232 plate appearances. Both MLB.com and Baseball America rated Kirilloff the Twins’ third-best prospect entering the 2017 season.
Poor diagnosing by medical staff or advice from a agent just caused this player to miss a entire year of development.
“A agent”. You’d think you were an MLBTR writer.
Best comment I’ve seen.
What’s wr0ng with MLBTR’s writers? They do a very good job with grammar, punctuation, and clarity. I don’t see how anyone could criticize their writing skills, especially considering the high volume of detailed work they put out on short deadlines.
Now, if you mean MLBTR commenters, I quite agree with you. But that’ s not what you wrote.
Couldn’t agree more
Want me to reply to this thread with a link to every post from now on that has grammatical errors? And no, I’m referring to the posts themselves, not the comments. I’d say 1 in 3 posts I read (approximately) are posted with sometimes painfully obvious errors.
Yes, document and post all the “painfully obvious errors”. It will be fascinating reading for all those who prefer picking nits to enjoying baseball.
You could even be the next C.T. Onions (cf.), with all the lauds, honors, and favors that today’s society loves to bestow on erudition.
Or better yet, find another site.
Clearly poor value with those occasional minor grammatical errors as they write stuff up as it happens. I probably would have put commas or brackets/parentheses after ‘with’ and before ‘errors’ in your final sentence. Still, as I got your meaning I wouldn’t write a post all about it, that would be silly.
I don’t get this either. The injury occurred in August and has a 9 month rehab time, 5 months until baseball activities. That would put him resuming baseball activities in February (in time for minor league spring training, etc.), with a return to action around early June. The platelet rich injection approach with that timing seems to have offered no real benefit, especially a non-pitcher this early in his career. If it had worked you now have a player with a questionable elbow that may become aggravated and ultimately need surgery in the future, when he’s on a big league roster, being paid more, and earning service time.
In most cases rest and rehab is always option one. It’s rare when they go straight to surgery. Most of the time, as we’ve seen, surgery is inevitable because that first option fails.
Not saying that’s right or wrong, but that’s how it goes. Is it a routine surgery now? Yes, but it’s still surgery and doctors tend to only do that as a last resort. Kepler did rest and rehab and didn’t have the surgery. So far it’s been fine for him.
Plum Pride. Get well soon, AK.