Walker Buehler undergoes second Tommy John surgery on right elbow
The Dodgers already knew they weren’t getting Walker Buehler back this year.
On Tuesday, they learned he’ll be out for most, and very possibly all, of the 2023 season as well.
The team announced Buehler had Tommy John surgery Tuesday to reconstruct his ulnar collateral ligament, the second time in his pro career he underwent the major procedure. Buehler also had a flexor tendon repair during Tuesday’s procedure.
The Tommy John diagnosis was made during a scheduled season-elbow surgery Buehler underwent Tuesday, performed by team doctor and renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache, to determine exactly what was ailing a balky elbow that’d kept him out since June.
“There’s no sugarcoating it, it is a tough blow,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said hours before the Dodgers beat the Brewers 10-1 at Dodger Stadium. “But we’ll get him back and I know he’s already itching.”
The Dodgers and infielder Max Muncy agreed to a one-year contract extension with a club option for 2024, but the team lost 4-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers.
Buehler, 28, originally went on the injured list two months ago with what was described by the team as a flexor tendon strain, after the right-hander felt some discomfort in his elbow during a start against the San Francisco Giants.
After an initial round of testing, the team decided to shut down Buehler for six weeks — during which time he also elected to have an arthroscopic procedure to remove an unrelated bone spur from his elbow — then see if he could complete a rehab process in time to rejoin the team for the playoffs. He started a throwing program late last month.
A few weeks ago, however, Buehler had a setback, when he felt more discomfort while playing catch.
He went in for another MRI, but the results weren’t clear enough to determine the specific issue.
At that point, ElAttrache — who performed Buehler’s first Tommy John surgery in 2015, after he was drafted in the first round by the Dodgers — recommended that Buehler undergo the season-ending elbow surgery, during which the exact issue could be pinpointed.
Though manager Dave Roberts initially said he didn’t believe Tommy John surgery would be a possibility, team officials quietly worried the pitcher had ligament damage. Friedman said a second Tommy John surgery was believed to be the worst-case scenario.
Those fears were confirmed during Tuesday’s operation, though Friedman said ElAttrache “felt great coming out of it.”
“There’s degrees of it and how the ligament looks and soft tissue around it, so from that standpoint, it actually turned out as well as could be expected,” Friedman said. “[ElAttrache] was extremely happy with how it went, and the integrity of the things around it and what he was able to kind of suture together.”
Still, Tuesday’s news puts a major question mark on Buehler’s future, as well as the Dodgers’ pitching plans for next year.
Though Friedman wasn’t ready Tuesday to rule out Buehler for all of next year — he also noted the extra repair of the tendon shouldn’t lengthen Buehler’s recovery time — the likelihood of the pitcher returning in roughly a year or less seems slim.
There isn’t an extensive history of frontline starting pitchers who went through a second Tommy John surgery in their prime, either, though Friedman said generally the data on pitchers who have a second Tommy John surgery is “actually really good” and expressed confidence in ElAttrache’s track record with such procedures.
“There are a lot of factors that go into it,” Friedman added. “Some of those things you’re not going to know for a while.”
Something that is now clear: The Dodgers are going to have to bolster their starting pitching depth before the start of next year.
Julio Urías, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin will be the only bona fide big league pitchers they’ll have under contract (though top prospects Ryan Pepiot, Bobby Miller and Gavin Stone are all currently in triple A).
On the mound tonight at Dodger Stadium: Brewers’ Corbin Burnes, the reigning NL Cy Young winner, and Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin, the NL’s ERA leader. They were college teammates.
Clayton Kershaw, Andrew Heaney and Tyler Anderson will be free agents.
And though the Dodgers should have money to spend this winter — especially if Trevor Bauer’s suspension isn’t significantly reduced — replacing a pitcher such as Buehler, who has a career 3.02 ERA and finished fourth in NL Cy Young Award voting last year, won’t be easy.
“So much of our focus right now is on finishing strong and really getting a sense for how we’re going to configure things hopefully going into October,” Friedman said. “For us, that’s really where our focus is. But there’s no question it’s something we’re going to have to address when we get into the offseason.”
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