Padres righty Dinelson Lamet will undergo Tommy John surgery, MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell reports on Twitter. He’ll miss the remainder of the 2018 season and, likely, some of the 2019 campaign as well.
When Lamet hit the DL to open the year, the expectation was that it was only to allow him a brief rest after some elbow pain cropped up. Instead, a closer look evidently revealed damage to his ulnar collateral ligament. As Cassavell notes, the young righty hoped at first to rehab rather than undergoing surgery, but ultimately elected to bite the bullet and have the procedure.
It came as something of a surprise when Lamet was brought up to the majors early in the 2017 campaign. But he quickly proved he belonged, showing a strong fastball-slider combo that played in the rotation despite the fact that he only went to his third pitch (a change) in less than one of every twenty deliveries. The 25-year-old Lamet ended the year with a 4.57 ERA over 114 1/3 innings. He recorded 10.9 K/9 on an 11.8% swinging strike rate while permitting a few too many walks and dingers (4.3 and 1.42 per nine, respectively).
Though there are obviously still some elements of Lamet’s game in need of being smoothed out, the hope was that he would continue to advance while providing solid innings at the MLB level. Now, he’ll be staring down a lengthy rehab process. When the 2019 season gets underway, Lamet will already have accrued 1.130 days of MLB service, so he’ll be primed for potential Super Two status if he goes straight back to the majors once he finishes his rehab.
Wow that’s brutal for the Dad’s. His FB/Slider combo is elite and righties couldn’t touch him last year.
Crap! Super disappointing news.
Why does everyone need this surgery so much over the last few years? Even position players now are needing it
Seems they’re more aggressive doing surgery to get it over with vs risk waiting it out with alternative options.
Raise the mound like they did in the old days and youll see injuries go down but so will batters batting average and we all know that mlb loves the long ball.
imindless…..The mound was lowered after the 68 season. Tommy John had the first surgery in 74. It wasn’t until 22 years later that the # of surgeries hit double digits with a high of 46 in 2014. It’s not the mound. It the abuse arms take from throwing year round starting as kids. Even pro pitcher should not participate in winter ball. Arms need rest not abuse.
# seems pretty consistent over the last decade.
link to docs.google.com
Recency bias. The majority of the TJS occur near the beginning of the season, for a variety of reasons.
They should just live pitchers this surgery right after the are drafted. It seems like it anyway
Beyond it being pseudo science it’s just a totally flawed idea. The new ligament basically has a general shelf life of 7 years. You’re also essentially asking somewhat semi healthy pitchers to gamble on their careers. Unless injured I have a hard time justifying teams asking them to do it. It’s essentially unethical and if they require a second ligament transplant they are done, obviously there are always outliers. Add onto that they essentially lose a year a half of development time. Basically you’re gaining nothing while gambling on everything.
Everyone throws a million innings with their hardest stuff.
At ages earlier and earlier. TJ surgeries will go down when scouts put down radar guns and let kids pitch rather than throw.
Sure, Yogi.
You’re right. Until baseball gets over it’s obsession with velocity, this will continue. Pitch framing is a garbage stat imo. Movement will soon become a primary stat which could rein in some of the velocity craze.
TradeRumors you guys should put a list together of everyone that has gotten TJ surgery so far this year
Someone would inevitably complain that MLBTR is reporting on non-trade news.
Probably best that he gets it done now so he can have an outside chance of pitching for the Padres late in 2019.
Agree Ryan
Padres fans just cant catch a break.
It seems like a lot of their top pitching prospects in the last few years have all gone through tommy john surgery.
Ruined the career of Corey luebke. He looked like an ace in the making.
I remember that guy having a lot of potential. It didn’t help that he needed TJ surgery twice. Plus his first surgery was allegedly sort of a botched procedure.
Bummer for Dinelson. Good news is that Robbie Erlin has come back strong from it.
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Uh, no….no Erlin. No thank you. He’s good for a spot start here and there, but not as a fixture in the rotation. No..
I think we all saw this coming after he first started having elbow pain. It sucks, because this guy was showing a lot of promise coming into the season. Hopefully he can come back sometime next year.
If they say “elbow problem” you can assume the pitcher is probably done at this point.
As a padres fan, I can’t even be surprised. Hope he has a speedy recovery
Thank god!!! I don’t know what the delay was for, I’m tired of the Padres doing the “we will just try and rehab it” strategy, when it ultimately leads to Tommy John surgery anyways. It’s a waste of another season. Perfect example: Anderson Espinoza was our top prospect heading into last season, elbow discomfort before the season started, didn’t throw a pitch to start the year…. rehabbed his arm…. then decided late in summer “ok yeah, he’s gonna need Tommy John”. Sooooo not only did he miss all of last year, but because of the delay in deciding to have Tommy John…. he is now missing all of this year as well with the recovery. At least the Padres got this one semi-right. Glad they didn’t carry out that “long toss” rehab program he was on for four more months, only to decide he needs Tommy John. Get it fixed now, rehab, get back next year. Best of luck to Lamet!
They probably wanted to try and exhaust all other options before going the TJ route. Maybe they thought Lamet could end up avoiding surgery, like Tanaka, Ervin Santana, and a few others have done. However, I feel like those guys are anomalies.
I agree on how they handled Espinoza last year, because they dawdled way too much with him. If it’s been almost a month and there’s no progress, just get the surgery. For most of these guys, TJ surgery is not just a possibility, it’s an inevitability.
A HUGE deal, bcuz right now their starting pitching outside of Ross & “Joey Fuego”, sucks elephant butt.