Guardians right-hander Daniel Espino, ranked as one of top overall prospects in all of baseball, will be shut down from throwing for at least the next eight weeks after being diagnosed with a strain of his subscapularis in his right shoulder and a tear of the anterior capsule in that same shoulder, per the team. Cleveland also announced that 2022 first-round pick Chase DeLauter will miss at least four months due to a fracture in his left foot that required surgery last month. The outfielder suffered a different foot fracture last April while still playing at James Madison University.
Espino’s injury is the latest developmental setback for the 22-year-old righty, who ranks among the sport’s top 25 prospects at each of Baseball America, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus. That’s due largely to an electric arsenal, headlined by an upper-90s heater that can reach triple digits, a plus slider and a pair of potentially average or better offerings in his changeup and curveball. Espino got out to a particularly brilliant start in 2022, posting a 2.45 ERA and striking out 35 of his 68 opponents in 18 1/3 innings through four starts.
Unfortunately for Espino, those four outings would be his only appearances of the season. He missed a couple months due to tendinitis in his knee, and he also battled shoulder troubles later in the summer. That same balky shoulder will now require a shutdown of roughly two months. A best-case scenario will see Espino resume throwing in late April, but even then, he’d need a fair bit of work before he was ready to pitch in a game setting. One would imagine he’ll be in line for a lengthier look in Double-A once he’s reached that point.
Espino was the No. 24 overall pick in the 2019 draft, but he’s managed only 156 1/3 professional innings to date thanks to last year’s injuries and the canceled 2020 minor league season. There’s still time for him to compile a fair number of innings in 2023, but it’s nevertheless discouraging for the organization and its fans that he’ll again begin the year sidelined due to health troubles.
As for DeLauter, he’s yet to even play in a professional game, thanks to that fractured foot last year, and he’ll now miss a substantial portion of the upcoming season after sustaining a new break. In a total of 66 NCAA games, DeLauter posted a comical .402/.520/.715 batting line with 15 home runs, 27 doubles, four triples, 24 steals (in 30 tries) and more walks (62) than strikeouts (45). Baseball America ranks him as the ninth-best prospect in a deep Guardians farm system.
That K rate is awesome!
Last year he was the most exciting prospect we saw in spring training.
Good luck kid. I hope your shoulder heals. See you in 2024.
The article says 8 weeks. Why are you pessimistic that he will not return this year? We should all hope he gets back this season because MLB should have better players playing.
Maybe they meant we’d see him in CLE at some point in 2024?
He’s shut down for 8 weeks. His absence will be significantly longer.
deGrom posts before he thinks.
A tear in the capsule of his throwing arm means surgery and missing a year. We have seen pitcher after pitcher miss most or all of the season when this injury happens. Why would Espino be different?
It doesn’t say he will miss only 8 weeks. It says he will be shut down from throwing for 8 weeks. Even if he miraculously avoids surgery and is able to start rehabbing in late April, the soonest he would be pitching in a game is June.
Every team is going to err on the side if caution with a top prospect. So if he miraculously avoids surgery and starts throwing again in 8 weeks, maybe they let him throw in complex games in July or August and he never makes it to full season ball.
I had shoulder surgery a few years ago at age 57. They *might* try a round of PT but realistically arthroscopic surgery and eight weeks of rehab at minimum. Anything more invasive knocks him out for the season. Judging from other replies, the latter is all too likely…
Dang and I bet you never threw a single pitch in the majors after that.
Poor kid, RIP
Julio Urias inn June 2017 while pitching for Triple-A Oklahoma City, Urías tore the anterior capsule in his left shoulder, which ended his 2017 season and required surgery.
He’s back for rehab assignment jn July 2018. So yeah, probably a year will be needed for Espino if he choose surgery
Yikes – any significant shoulder injury in a pitcher these days can spell the end of days or at least a significant drop in potential. Seems like most pitchers with shoulder injuries in the past decade or so never rebounded or came back far from the pitcher they were before.
Hopefully his youth works in his favor, because his stuff is amazing.
How did this dude shoot up prospect lists throwing only 18 IP last year anyway?
Such a promising young talent, sucks when we hear news like this.
He is a top prospect, but unfortunately, just that.
Hopefully, he can get back on the mound healthy, prove himself, and possibly make the MLB roster sometime in 2024.
Could the mechanics involved in making Espino’s stuff so electric, also make him more injury prone?
I would bet it is. The number of pitchers who haven’t undergone tj or some other kind of arm surgery, or missed a significant amount of time due to other arm problems are few and far between. Ever wonder why Tom Seaver missed little or no time due to arm injuries? Because he used his legs to generate power. He didn’t rely on all the power coming from his arm. Too bad pitchers don’t do that anymore. It would solve a lot of problems.
I believe the tear of the anterior capsule is the same injury that Tigers prospect Franklin Perez had. This seems to be a unfortunate injury. Hopefully he can work himself back to compete at a high level
Optimist- best this happened now so he can get it corrected and continue on with his promising career
Pessimist- he’s toast and will never be the same. Injuries will follow him his entire career. Should have traded him
I think it’s somewhere in between, but his prospect star is already fading with this news. Not an easy injury to recover from and fully regain the stuff he had before.
Echoes of Adam Miller. Goddamit!
A tear of the anterior capsule is rare, and when it occurs, happens most often to pitchers in their mid-30s, as it is usually an injury of attrition, The most comparable young pitcher to have this injury was Julio Urias, who had surgery June 17, 2017, returned in September 2018 to pitch four innings, was kept to an inning cap in 2019 that left him just shy of 80 MLB innings, and only returned to a full load, after the COVID season, in 2021, though he likely was ready to resume a fuller load in 2020.
I suspect the Guardians wait until June, perhaps try using various healing efforts that are unlikely to work, like Platelet-Rich Plasma Injections, then do surgery, which would mean a return to a reduced workload in 2025.
When Urias returned in 2019, his velocity was actually better than in 2016/17 but has trended downward since even though he remained quite effective the past two seasons.
Thanks for the analysis.
That’d a hard break, hate to see these guys on the cusp go down like this. Agree with other posters that his road back is complicated and hard but hope it will work out for him.
The sort of headliner pitching prospect Pirates wanted for Reynolds.
I happened to be looking at the MLB top 100 prospects from 2016 and 17 this morning. At least half of them aren’t important or even starting major league players today and only a small handful are the electric players predicted in their former bios. The biggest reason is injuries.
I hope and pray that Daniel is able to overcome his injury issues – I will root for him! Maybe he can surprise us. That would be amazing!
But as a practical person I’m not counting on him at all and I expect that four more in the Guardians’ top ten will not turn out. Perhaps 2 or 3 will lead this team to the promised land.. I’m betting on Williams and Bibee. Anything we get over that is gravy.
From 2017, 16 of those 100 top 100 prospects have been MLB average or better over their MLB careers. 2.0 WAR is considered MLB average for most seasons, although it varies slightly from year to year.
4 more have had at least one season above MLB average.
A couple more like Josh Hader didn’t make that cut because they became relievers, but were still above average for their position.
Re the Guardians top prospects, I’m really hoping that Bo Naylor will end up behind the plate as long as Sandy Alomar was.
Cleveland and Espino are definitely keeping their fingers crossed. This type of injury can end a career as the shoulder surgeries normally associated with these injuries have a pretty low rate of success for MLB pitchers.
Two tears, rest and rehab? That’s just pure wishing at this point, but I can’t blame them for taking this approach. Espino wouldn’t be able to legitimately start pitching competitively until the second half of next season under the best case scenario. If in 8 weeks surgery is confirmed, Espino might be back in 2025.
Espino might as well go for the surgery and start the recovery and PT. He’s not going to get better in 8 weeks time from a tear of the anterior capsule. More like a recovery of 8-12 months after surgery.
DeLauter. Last year at this time he was getting serious pub for possibly being the number one overall pick in the draft. IMO, Cleveland stole him at 16. Get healthy young fella, get healthy.