The Angels announced today that right-hander Ben Joyce underwent surgery on his right shoulder this morning and is expected to miss the remainder of the season. Joyce is already on the 60-day injured list and will stay there for the rest of the campaign.
It’s a tough break for the Halos and one of baseball’s fastest throwers. Joyce, 24, has thrown 49 innings with the Halos to this point in his career. His fastball has averaged 101.6 miles per hour, while he’s also mixed in a cutter, sinker, slider and changeup. Despite that huge velocity, he’s more of a ground-ball pitcher, with a 53.7% rate in that department. His 21% strikeout rate and 11.4% walk rate are subpar, but he’s still managed to post a 3.12 earned run average.
He landed on the 15-day IL about two weeks into the season due to inflammation in his throwing shoulder. Joyce and the Angels seemed to initially think it was a minor issue. He framed the IL stint as precautionary at the time, saying that he “just kind of thought it was normal soreness, and ended up getting reevaluated and just a little more inflamed than we wanted it to be. So [we’re] just trying to get ahead of it.”
But last week, the Halos transferred him to the 60-day IL, indicating that the prognosis had changed. Now it seems to have gotten far worse, with Joyce going under the knife. The announcement was lacking in specifics about the procedure but the main takeaway is that 2025 will essentially be a lost season for Joyce.
The Halos have one of the worst bullpens in the league this year. Their relievers have a collective ERA of 7.07, tied with the Nationals for worst in the majors. Both clubs are almost two runs clear of their competition, as the Diamondbacks are the next-worst bullpen with a 5.18 ERA. That’s part of the reason the Angels are 17-24 so far. Getting Joyce back could have helped but that won’t happen now.
Joyce came into this year with one year and 75 days of big league service time. He’ll continue adding to that while on the IL and will therefore finish this year at 2.075. He’s slated to qualify for arbitration after 2026 and free agency after 2029.
Photo courtesy of David Banks, Imagn Images
Hope his recovery is as fast as his fastball
Smooth bro
Angels fans can’t catch a break. Granted, his few outings this season weren’t great, but he looked solid last season.
His last outing was when he was hurt. What was wrong before that? One run in 3 innings?
Humans are incapable of throwing consistently 101+ mph. When are we going to learn this..
Nolan Ryan was a monster
When are we going to learn this..
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We already know this. But just like with FB players wrecking up knees, shoulders, elbows, CTA, etc., no one cares. No one shows up at training camp looking to preserve their health.
They’ll ‘learn’ once throwing 101+ stops being incentivized.
It’s like we’re watching the same movie for 4 years straight and no matter how they shuffle the cast, it’s the same crappy ending.
Was anybody else confident that doctors knew he was out for the season before the Ben Joyce bobblehead night?
Let the parade of ” I told you so” or I knew he wasn’t going to last” begin.
Best of luck Ben. I hope you are back better than ever next year!
It doesn’t matter how hard you throw ball 4.
Best of luck. There was obvious risk when he was drafted.
Hopefully he’s fixed for the next several years after this.
You. Just. Can’t. Throw. That. Hard.
Arms are not designed for it.
That’s why most flamethrowers always get injured
Degrom, strasburg, even verlander once he got old
Paul skenes so far is the only flame thrower that hasn’t gotten major surgery yet so I’d keep an eye on him
aroldis Chapman hasn’t had any major injuries I don’t think
There are plenty of guys tht rhrow hard and stay healthy. Ryan, Carlton, Walter Johnson, Feller, Randy Johnson, Paige, Verlander, Wagner, Chapman, Paps, JR Richard, Colon, etc.
I think folks are commingling “everything” wears down, as opposed to just elbows, and specifically related to speed.
When I was growing up, about 100% of the blame was on kids throwing too many curveballs. If there was some magical way to find out, I’d bet that the torque from excess rotation was probably quite a bit worse than a straight fastball.
Paul Skenes is like two minutes into his career. Give it time.
baseball-reference.com/players/r/ryanno01.shtml
baseball-reference.com/players/c/chapmar01.shtml
baseball-reference.com/players/v/verlaju01.shtml
baseball-reference.com/players/f/fellebo01.shtml
Absolutely impossible to do it for long. Certainly not for 15 or more years.
I count Chapman as a modern day exception but he is a reliever so that’s not as much wear and tear
He’s still been very healthy compared to all of the other flamethrowers
Certainly not for 15 or more years.
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My position is that you might not be able to do anything consistently hard for 15 years without injuries.
I was being sarcastic. Should have put a /s at the end of the post. All of those guys threw triple digits and did it for 15 years.
@seam: Agree with the point, not crazy about the single-word-sentence fad. It’s nails on the proverbial chalkboard to this old English teacher.
He’ll come back with a beard and long hair
How is it possible the Angel pen gets worse every year. I didn’t think that was possible.
Under Minasian, it started out poor, and gets worse and worse and worse?
I can’t wait until Moreno is gone so everything in this organization can be torn down and rebuilt.
Nothing will change. Does not matter who the GM is as long as they have the same owner. Look at all the GM’s the team has had since Moreno bought the team. Never gets better, Just gets worse.
I think it would improve, but with Moreno, even a talented GM would have a hard time winning.
Suarez strikes out 5 in 6 innings. The Angels are first in K% and last in BB%. That’s not on Moreno. A bad bullpen every year, is not on Moreno. I doubt the drafts are on Moreno. The little league team defense is not Moreno.
A complete restructuring would do a lot of good, but this team will never be a quality team with Moreno.
Whoa, a rare good analysis by an Angels fan!
I doubt Moreno is picking the specific players to draft, sign, or pay for. The budget for scouting, training, statistical analysis, etc., I don’t know about.
But their drafts, except for Neto, have been horrendous.
Why do the Angels have the fewest scouts in baseball? Why is the budget for scouting one of the lowest in Baseball? Who do you think sets the budget? When some of the minor leaguers are forced to sleep in there cars. Others are working two jobs to keep a roof over their heads. there just might be a problem with the budget of the minor league system. Artie is the problem. Artie is not interested in building a winner. All he wants is maximum profit.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
But honestly, how do you draft the players that have been drafted?
It’s a multi-headed snake. It’s starts with Moreno, but everything must go.
Moreno is to blame. Moreno has cut the budget on scouting and player development compared to Lwhat was spent back when Mickey Mouse ran the team. Hire the younger guy with no proven track record to run the scouting and minor leagues because they will work cheaper and won’t object to Moreno’s constant meddling. look what he did with Ohtani. He never offered hm a new contract. He refused to trade him because he wanted to make as much money as possible. He did not care what not trading him did for the future of the team. Look what San Diego gave up to Washington for Soto. It sure would be good if the Halo’s had made the trade instead.
It doesn’t excuse the drafting of Bachman, Schanuel and Moore. Or other high draft picks.
It doesn’t excuse his trades, his inept attempt at building a pen and adding players to help the roster, dispute spending a ton of money.
As I keep saying, it’s a multi-headed snake. I have no idea how people disagree with me on that.
Just to amplify my point. Adell had a 890OPS+ at AA, with a 25% KRate, He was 19 and 20 years old and the promoted him to the major leagues. It was the Covid year, so it’s excusable.
Moore was just promoted to AAA. At 22, at AA, he has a 27% KRate and a 665OPS+.
That’s not Moreno. That’s some other idiot in the organization.
I suggested to Mr Perry a few times to sign estevez.
We can never have nice things. I blame you Arte. Even though this is not your fault, I still blame you.
he keeps the regime that drafted this guy who can’t stay healthy around. no?
Will be part of the Driveline and/or Tennessee PED’s documentary. Shoulder injury? No bueno
Next update from Angels in the next week or two. Mike Trout has undergone surgery and is expected to miss the season. Could Mike Trout and Rendon both do like Derek Carr and retire. As much I liked Mike over the years he probably won’t hit over .250 again in his career or play more than half the games at best.
I guess this is what tends to happen when you throw 105 mph…
Hoping for a speedy recovery.
As long as the freak Aroldis is pushing 40 and still throwing 104 w/o consistent injuries, teams are never going to throttle their guys who can consistently hit 100.
Zeferajen is Not a Joyce replacement but he has good stuff. Also, why has lefty Sammy Natera not been called up? Getting rid of both Washington and Perry would be OK with me but we all hope Moreno would just sell the team.
Everything must go.
Y’all need to rebuild about as badly as I have ever seen a team need to rebuild.
1-Sign Neto to a lifetime contract., and O’Hoppe to 6-7 years.
2-Trade everyone else.
With a team with money, it should only take 2-3 years, but you’ve waited way too long.
A rebuild is absolutely needed and you have identified most of the players they should keep around. I like Schanuel and think that with the right coaching and technological tools every competitive team makes available to players that he could be a solid, long-term contributor.
That is a decent position player core. Neto, O’Hoppe, and Schanuel.
Soriano is a decent if unspectacular #3 starter. Keep him.
Jettison everyone else starting with Arte Moreno.
More than anything the Angels need a POBO with the power to do and spend what is needed to rebuild the organization from the bottom up. Just retooling the major league squad is not enough. It would only give us a 1-2 year reprieve.
The reason is the Angels have among the smallest baseball operations staff in the minors and majors, the smallest scouting staff, the fewest technological aids for players, and the worst facilities imaginable for training.
The Angels just added a pitching lab last year. For several years the training room at spring training was in a freaking tent. For 4 years the major league players worked out and played at the minor league spring training facility because Arte refused to spend money to repair and upgrade the major league facility. That only got done in time for spring training this year because Minasian got the city of Tempe to kick in most of the money. If it was up to Arte, they would still be working out in a tent and practicing on the minor league fields.
Here is the thing. Even that has proven to be mostly useless because Arte didn’t fund permanent, full-time additions to the staff to USE that new player development facility year round. It is fantastic to have that available during spring training and the Angels came out of camp relatively hot, but since no one staffs it right now, is not being used to help players make adjustments in season.
I could go on almost endlessly about how much Arte Moreno has damaged the Angels system long term. .
Idk, based on JoeBrady’s praise of John Fisher, he wouldn’t think Arte is the problem, unfortunately.
I don’t see the Angels getting better soon. The Angels have a ton tied up in Trout, Rendon, and Stephenson. That is 80M in pretty much dead money. When you subtract that from their 215M, they effectively have 135M payroll. When your stars can’t play, you;re not going to win. Some of the better teams spend 300M+ and have stars that play.
The Angels have missed so many opportunities to improve. They should have traded Ohtani, but they didn’t. When Ohtani offered to stay for the same contract, Arte said no. I do think Moreno is responsible for keeping Ohtani and letting him go as well. The Angels could have traded Rengifo last year when he had his career year. Now he is playing like Rengifo again and would be lucky to get a bag of balls for him. Anderson and Ward were also trade possibilities. I don’t think there was much of a market for Anderson, but Ward could have and should have been traded.
When you have a owner that meddles, nixes trades, forces you to sign bad contracts, and forces you to keep players because they are cheap, you are never going to get better.
Joe, O’Hoppe has a 37% KRate which is second in baseball. I’m not sold on him.
It’s the battle of the title for worst billionaire owners! Jerry Reinsdorf, Arte Moreno, John Fisher, Bob Nutting.
A young pitcher throwing 100mph injures himself. That sounds like bad training. The Angels organization seems to have a lot of players go down who don’t have the right conditioning, including Mike. Get a better staff to take care of the athletes, maybe they wouldn’t be injured so much.
Face reality and start trading. Jansen-Anderson-Rengoofo-Hendricks-Ward-Adell-Even Trout if you can. Lugo and Rada might fil those 2 spots.. Just keep Neto-Ohoppe and Schanuel.