Mariners’ Sam Tuivailala To Undergo Season-Ending Surgery

Mariners reliever Sam Tuivailala will undergo season-ending surgery on his right Achilles, manager Scott Servais announced Saturday (via Greg Johns of MLB.com, on Twitter).

Tuivailala exited his outing against the Rangers on Wednesday with an Achilles injury, and it’ll prove to be his last time on the mound for a while. He only threw 5 1/3 innings this year with Seattle, which acquired him from St. Louis two weeks ago in a surprising trade. Between the two teams in 2018, the 25-year-old Tuivailila registered a 3.41 ERA/3.72 FIP with 7.3 K/9, 2.92 BB/9 and a 49.2 percent groundball rate in 37 innings.

It’s not yet clear if Tuivailala will be ready to go in spring training, but the good news for the Mariners is that he’s controllable through the 2022 campaign. Tuivailala played this year on a relatively minimal salary and will do the same in 2019, which is slated to be his final pre-arb season. In the meantime, the playoff-contending Mariners will have to make do without a capable reliever as they try to erase the division-rival A’s 1 1/2-game lead on the AL’s second wild-card spot.