The Guardians announced Wednesday that right-hander Daniel Espino, the top pitching prospect in their system and one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball, underwent a right shoulder anterior capsule repair. He’ll miss the remainder of the season. Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who performed the surgery, projects a return to game activity in 12 to 14 months.
The surgery is the latest setback for Espino, 22, who entered the season ranked 33rd or better on the top-100 lists of MLB.com (No. 16), ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel (No. 18), Baseball America (No. 19), Baseball Prospectus (No. 25) and The Athletic’s Keith Law (No. 33). That fanfare is attributable to a devastating repertoire that includes a triple-digit heater, a plus slider and an average or better changeup and curveball.
Touted as he may be, Espino’s shoulder surgery means he’ll now pitch in just four total games from 2022-23. He opened the 2022 season with an overwhelming, dominant showing that saw him punch out 35 of his 68 opponents en route to a 2.45 ERA in 18 1/3 innings. He hasn’t pitched in a game setting since, however. Espino missed two months due to tendinitis in his knee and battled shoulder problems later in the summer. An offseason of rest was hoped to clear that issue up, but when he resumed throwing, he again felt discomfort and was eventually diagnosed with a subscapular tear and capsule tear. The team shut him down for eight more weeks, but that didn’t prove sufficient.
Espino was the No. 24 overall pick in the 2019 draft, but he’s managed only 133 2/3 professional innings to date thanks to last year’s injuries and the canceled 2020 minor league season. He’ll now have yet another lengthy layoff and won’t be back on the mound until he’s turned 23. That’s obviously young enough for him to have a long and fruitful career, but the persistent injury problems have obviously stalled what could’ve been a meteoric rise to the big leagues based on his sheer, raw talent.
Given injuries elsewhere on the roster, a healthy Espino would’ve had a good chance at debuting this season. Cleveland is already undergoing something of a youth movement in the rotation, with each of Tanner Bibee, Logan Allen and Peyton Battenfield making his MLB debut in the season’s first month while Aaron Civale and Triston McKenzie are on the injured list.
Sigh.
Don’t u worry dr El attache has got this. Best arm Dr. Around
Poor Indians.
Sorry to hear
The Guardians never get to have nice things
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. The amount of foreign substances these prospects put into their bodies just in hopes of making it is ridiculous. He knew the risks
He knew the risks of what exactly?
I think he’s referring to the excess amount of interior capsules one takes before the inevitable anterior capsule collapses.
setup, and knockout. well executed.
To all the Kyle Hendricks well wishers take note.
visual meme: Alex Jones in a tinfoil hat turning and looking at the camera slowly.
bkbk: You mean Alex Jones the government agent who pretends to be a crazy conspiracy-theorist guy??
Wish the best for the young man. Rough road ahead to recovery.
It will be interesting to see if he is well enough to be put on the 40 man roster before the Rule Five draft. Sometimes the Guardians protect those guys, sometimes not.
CLE will protect this guy later this year. Unlike Santander, Espino was a #1 pick & considered a top prospect in all of baseball. Unlike Aikens or Santander, Espino has made it to the AA level.
Depends on how bad he is hurt. They didn’t protect Ethan Hankins because they new no one would pick him as a result of his injury.
Espino is a better arm & closer to the bigs than Hankins. He’ll be plucked immediately. No way they leave him off. He’d be a trade chip before that occurred.
This is why you can never bank on pitching prospects. If they haven’t been hurt yet, it’s only a matter of time before they do. What scares me about Espino is that he still has yet to have TJS. Guys that throw as hard as he does are a ticking time bomb to blow out their elbow.
I have said these teams bring it on themselves with their reliance on the radar gun over command and control.
Cleveland is the exact opposite. They value command and control over velocity. See Bibee, Allen, Beiber.
Civale too. McKenzie isn’t a flamethrower either.
Where does this article mention foreign substance?
It doesn’t. People like to speculate without evidence. Humorous actually the way these guys are tested now. Anyone using anything is caught quickly.
Really disappointing as a big fan of his. Just stinks that he hasn’t been able to even try to live up to his hype
Guardians look like they’re in heap big trouble this year……
Then again, I’m looking at Terry Francona trying different combinations and trying players in different roles. He’s been through numerous bad stretches in his career and is the best manager in MLB He’ll work with their FO and the coaching staff to somehow right the ship. It’s a long season. I expect the Guards will be within striking distance of 1st place in August, and will be ready for the stretch run.
Fortunately for the team, organization and their fans – the AL Central is far and away the worst division in MLB. It should have been one of the best, but 3 teams fumbled their rebuilds away.
Three games out with two starters on the IL and two young guys who look terrific in their place is heap big trouble?
In nurse follars;
Yes.
Karinchak looks terrible (apparently a pitch clock casualty). Civale and Plesac are questionable. Like most teams in MLB, their bullpen is already overworked.
At this point they’re nor scoring many runs (26th in runs scored). Bell is not protecting Jose. Josh Naylor is not producing in spite of only playing against favorable matchups. Rosario, Kwan, Gimenez, and Gonzalez are not hitting anywhere near what they did in 2022. Straw did his usual: Started out hitting the first 3-5 weeks, now heading to a .200 BA with a below .300 OBP……and is David Fry the next Ernie Clement?
Tito and his coaches have a lot of work to do.
Agreed. A lot went right last year but now it overcorrected itself and everything has gone wrong. I don’t have much hope in the bottom of their rotation, guys like Civale and Plesac aren’t good, and the top reinforcement is now hurt. Also, it’s really unfortunate when a team that doesn’t spend goes out of their way to sign a good FA fit only for him to fall flat on his face.
Nurse—I love it—“three games out….”
Here’s the beauty of it—in the AL Central I am willing to be that the first team to 78 wins is the division champ.
I am NOT saying that the winner of the division only has 78 wins (though it’s entirely possible)–but I am saying that the second place team in the division tops out at no more than 77 wins.
The Sox started terrible—the Guardians have started terrible—the Twins started “OK” but have now just lost Mahle and Maeda for lengthy periods. And, of course, the Tigers and Royals are well, the Tigers and Royals.
I’m squinting very hard to find a .500 team in the division…..anyone see one?
Tito does nothing but plan ahead. He already knows his August rotation. And the GM is no slouch either. One day you’ll wake up, see CL in 1st, with serious contributions from players that are nobody’s radar.
There’s nothing to be terribly concerned about in Cleveland. They haven’t had their #2 all year and they’ve been missing Civale.
They’re deep in pitching. Play in a weak division. They need another bat but that’s much easier to acquire at the deadline. Won’t cost much of anything for an upgrade.
I believe Julio Urías experienced a similar injury early in his career and was young enough then to recover nicely. Hopefully the same happens for this guy.
I hate this for baseball that so many of our top pitching prospects always seem to have their careers derailed before they even get started.
Hence the acronym, TINSTAAPP.
skinsfandfw;
What teams and their coaching staffs are doing to their pitchers in MLB today is criminal.
Playing full-out as if it’s the 7th game of the WS is fine, as long as the players have the winter to rest up. But doing it every day of a 162 game season (and then the playoffs start)…….
Samuel – I’m not sure what the answer is, but whatever they’ve been doing to try to protect these prized arms over the past 10-15 years doesn’t seem to be working. Sure seems, at least anecdotally, that pitchers are getting hurt more often and with serious arm/elbow/shoulder injuries than ever before.
Perhaps all of this new technology we are introducing to the game will help lead to some fruitful findings that lead people to the source(s) of trouble.
skinsfandfw;
The source of the trouble is that teams are demanding more K’s by “missing bats”, and to get that they want more speed on the pitches as well as more movement. All of which put too much strain on a pitchers arm / elbow / shoulder / forearm / wrist / finger.
For 7-8 years now I’ve advocated that a batter should be called out on the 3rd foul ball after 2 strikes. The rule to call a batter out when bunting foul after 2 strikes was put in place in the early 1900’s because batters were bunting foul constantly to tire out the opposing pitchers, and fans stopped coming to games because they were so boring.
Look at what we have today – almost all teams bullpens have been overworked by May 1. This is ridiculous….especially with the canceled games due to bad weather. Because of the counting of pitches, pitchers are being pulled far too early when they hit their limit. If the batters were forced to try to put the ball in play instead of hitting endless foul balls to “get a good pitch to hit”, pitchers could back off some on their pitches and save their arms. Pitching a baseball is an unnatural motion. Overstressing pitchers is simply criminal. Too many pitchers have too short careers in MLB.
P.S. I heard an interesting stat the other night…..
Batters are hitting .298 when balls are put in play, the highest BA’s since 2009. Shows the banning of extreme shifts is working.
This is the BS nonsense we get from the PR bean counters. They don’t talk about the percentage of ball being put in play going up…..because they aren’t. Foul balls rule.
@Samuel Karinchak has pitched 15 innings over 31 games. I would not deem that over worked. Espino’s injury is most commonly associated with repetitive overhead movements(pitching). Espino has yet to pitch this season and only pitched 18 innings for CLE organization. Again can’t see that as being over worked. Part of baseball especially with pitchers is arm trouble. We just hear about more these days as information is more readily available and diagnosing injuries has come a long way. Yes focus on throwing harder plays some part, but all in all arm injuries with pitchers is going to happen. It is a violent repetitive motion that the human body is not designed for.
Tigers3232;
Karinchak is not the only pitcher in the bullpen. Their 2 best pitchers last year out of the pen were Karinchak and Clase. Last night Clase blew a save for the third time in 13 chances.
As for your point about pitchers motions and injuries – I wrote that. OK, they can diagnose injuries better currently then in years past. Fine. But one would think that with all the data and video they have along with advanced medical knowledge, that teams would be working to protect their pitchers health. They have large investments in those pitchers. The fact remains – in years past pitchers were not expected to consistently throw 95-100 mph with a fastball, or high 80 mph on some breaking balls. Batters weren’t hitting endless foul balls (every once in a while a reporter will note the percentage of foul balls hit against a pitcher in a game – but for all the stats we read about, that one is never discussed.)
Pitchers injuries have continued to skyrocket for 20 years. Attributing that to technical breakthroughs in diagnosing the injuries makes no sense. If I continue to bang my head against the wall every day, noting that there are now sensors on the wall to record my head hitting the wall harder and harder every year, and that I can go to a medical clinic and they can better diagnose my head injury, isn’t the reason I keep injuring my head. LOL
People resolve problem issues in life by going to the core of the problem and making adjustments. Treating the symptoms generally provides a short-term blip in the upward trajectory, then adjustments are made and the trajectory continues on its path.
@Samuel, medical imaging and testing technology has advanced significantly in last 20 years. So yes injuries can be found sooner, make sense? Clase is still pitching to the tune of a 2.20 ERA. The reality is relief pitching has historically been erratic year in and year out. Also spring weather makes for wild baseball, with dramatic weather shifting ball often carries more and is livelier off tha bat. Lastly, everything went right for CLE last season with then youngest roster in MLB, regression was pretty much inevitable.
What teams and their coaching staffs are doing to their pitchers in MLB today is criminal.
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Some of this my be due to the contracts, especially with RPs. The Yankees always did this, even 40 years ago, and they were smart to do so. Maybe it is a bit Machiavellian, but once pitchers become FAs, there is very little added value. The objective, within reason, is to extract whatever value you can.
And a lot of pitchers probably don’t care, especially as they age. If I’m Brasier, for example, I’m playing for one more year’s contract, same as Bleier & Martin. I don’t care if my arm needs surgery. Same with Bernardino. I’m guessing that if he needs TJS in 3-4 years, he won’t care.
At least he’s still very young
The doctor has the proper
surname. I’m sure the shoulder is reattached properly. I’m
Well, of course. I feel I may need surgery just reading these hourly updates on surgeries.
If you find a buy one, buy another 50% off, I’m in.
Not a Guardians fan, but sorry to hear this. Always excited to see which top talents pan out and Cleveland has a good history of getting the most out of their pitching prospects.