White Sox reliever Edgar Navarro is slated to undergo Tommy John surgery in early March, the team announced to reporters Tuesday evening (X link via Scott Merkin of MLB.com). He’ll miss the 2024 season as a result and could be sidelined early in 2025 as well.
Navarro, 26, made his big league debut with the ChiSox in 2023, pitching 8 2/3 innings out of manager Pedro Grifol’s bullpen. He was tagged for seven runs on 11 hits and a pair of walks with nine punchouts in that brief cup of coffee, with the bulk of the damage coming in one nightmare outing that saw him yield five runs in a lone inning of work. Chicago outrighted him off the 40-man roster in December to clear a roster spot for free-agent signee Erick Fedde. Injured players can’t be placed on outright waivers, so the fact that Navarro was outrighted a couple months back suggests this is a new injury that occurred in the offseason.
In the upper minors, Navarro has enjoyed better run prevention but still displayed shaky strikeout and walk tendencies. He notched a combined 3.59 ERA between Double-A and Triple-A in 2023 but did so while fanning just 19% of his opponents against a 16.1% walk rate. Navarro kept the ball on a huge 59.8% clip in the minors and at a 53.8% clip in the big leagues, leaning hard on a sinker that averaged 93.6 mph. That’s an encouraging trait, but he’ll need to drastically improve his K-BB profile if he’s to find sustained success at the game’s top level. The injury in question will prevent his ability to refine that K-BB profile for at least the next year.
Navarro has never been considered among the White Sox’ top prospects, due in no small part to his poor command. He’s shown the ability to miss bats at times and has consistently piled up grounders at borderline elite levels, but the 6’1″ righty has also walked 12.8% of his opponents across all professional levels and plunked a whopping 44 batters in 273 professional innings. In all, he’s allowed 16.2% of his opponents to reach base without even putting a ball in play.
Wild thing? Number 99 just needed glasses.
Would rather have prime Greg Maddux.
Man is this a slow news day or what. Anyone know a good joke?
Jerry Reinsdorf wants another $1 billion for a new stadium. Was that funny?
Absolutely- that old man is off his rocker.
He is crazy like a FOX!
Unfortunately Barry, it’s NOT a joke. Jerry is trying to grab more money from Chicago taxpayer when he still owes 50 million on the current stadium. A stadium that he forced the state to build for him in to his specific specifications in stead of the “stadium in a neighborhood” concept that ALL the experts advised him to build. (Google original whitesox stadium plan and read CBS sports article) The man bought this team for 20 million in 1981 and it is now worth 2.2 billion. Couple that with his age (chances are he will never see stadium completed), and it becomes obvious that ALL he is doing is trying to increase the sale price of the team for his children and his investors. Remember he has already been on record telling his kids to keep the Bulls and sell the Sox. How many BILLIONS is enough for this guy? He isn’t going to put money into putting a winner on the field is he?
@runamok266 – Absolute Facts!
It’s easy to see why Veeck never wanted to sell the team to Reinsdorf but was forced to by the commissioner, who promised to turn down every offer Veeck got for the team he really cared about.
The Padres will win their first WS……Hahahaha!
The “Dodgers” didn’t even try to dodge the luxury tax this year.
Not bad- I’ll give you a 7 outta 10.