Bad news has become common for the Marlins at the start of the Major League season and the most recent is undoubtedly a devastating blow.
After suffering at home a streak of failures and disappointments that turned into seven consecutive defeats and the worst start in its history, the Miami team will not be able to count on young pitcher Eury Pérez from now on.
Eury Pérez will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the remainder of the 2024 season.
Pérez is one of 11 pitchers since 1980 to have 100+ strikeouts in a season age 20 or younger.#MLB | #Marlins pic.twitter.com/Uatu88Jq36
— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) April 4, 2024
The Dominican right-hander will undergo Tommy John surgery next Monday to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow and will miss the rest of the season, the team’s president of baseball operations, Peter Bendix, announced this Thursday.
“I know Eury is really frustrated,” Bendix said before the start of the first game of the series against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis where the Marlins hope to change their course, after the sweeps suffered against the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Angels at their headquarters in Little Havana.
“Eury is very disappointed, but he also understands that this is a minor setback and that it will be a really long race.”
For the Fish it is another blow to their injured pitching rotation, which will also not have their ace Sandy Alcántara this year for the same reason.
Two other starters, Braxton Garrett and Edward Cabrera, began the season on the injured list with shoulder problems.
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At 20 years old, Pérez suffered a slight inflammation in his elbow during the preseason and the fish immediately performed tests to see the extent of the discomfort.
Having those Cuban genes of competing and working hard has been a blessing. Young man from Miami lives his dream
He traveled to Texas to meet with Dr. Keith Meister, the same one who operated on his compatriot and mentor Alcántara, but the procedure was not recommended.
He was not in the first two series in Miami and felt more discomfort in his elbow after some pitches in a bullpen session last Tuesday, something that led to a second meeting with Meister and his exclusion from the campaign.
“It’s been kind of a roller coaster ride,” Bendix said.
“At first we had frustration about the elbow pain and then came the positive perspective that maybe I didn’t need surgery. It was later learned that the ligament was not in good shape, but that he could throw until the symptoms returned. It could be in two weeks or two years and that unfortunately happened now, so the best thing was to do it at this time and not in the middle of the season.”
Pérez was one of the best sensations the Marlins experienced in the last contest.
He debuted in May and became the youngest starter in club history. He finished 6-5 with a 3.15 ERA in 91 1/3 innings in 19 starts.
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He struck out 108 batters, walked 31 and opponents hit him for a poor .214.
He was sent to Double A for a month in early July to manage his workload so he could help the team if it advanced to the playoffs as it did later.
Although Pérez’s departure comes as a shock after this stormy start to the campaign, the Miami team expects some reinforcements in its rotation by the end of the month.
Cabrera pitched three innings at Triple A Jacksonville while rehabbing on Sunday and left-hander Garrett pitched three innings on Tuesday.
2024-04-05 03:50:12
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