An already disastrous season the Miami Marlins just got worse. After starting the year out 0-7, the club announced that RHP Eury Perez would require season ending surgery, ending his 2024 campaign before it even began.
According to reports, the 20 year old righty was throwing without any issues prior to Opening Day. However, after throwing a bullpen session on Tuesday, he complained about tightness in his elbow. Additional testing revealed a torn UCL which will require surgery to address.
The team initially diagnosed Perez with elbow inflammation during Spring Training, but never officially shut him down. Team officials were operating under the assumption that additional rest would have the talented hurler back into game action by early April. Now, he will turn his attention to making a return to the mound in 2025.
Dr. Keith Meister in Dallas will perform the surgery early next week. He is the same doctor who performed surgery on former NL Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara.
“I know Eury is really frustrated,” Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix said. “He’s really disappointed, but he also understands that this is a minor setback in what’s going to be a really long career.”
“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster, initially having the frustration of the elbow soreness and followed by the positive outlook on you don’t need surgery right now. There was an understanding that the ligament was not in great shape and essentially, you can pitch with it until you can’t, and nobody knows when that’s going to be. You have to try and see when the symptoms return. And unfortunately, that happened now. Better now than in the middle of the season.”
The hard throwing Dominican burst onto the scene in 2023, posting a 5-6 record, with a 3.15 ERA, 2.5 WAR, while punching out 108 batters across 91.1IP. For his efforts, he finished 7th in rookie of the year voting.
While it’s never ideal to lose a front of the rotation starter, the injury will prove especially troublesome for a Marlins squad that’s already exceptionally thin in the arms department.
Ace Sandy Alcantara is currently recovering from Tommy John surgery performed in October of 2023 and will miss the entirety of the 2024 campaign. RHP Edward Cabrera remains on the IL with a shoulder issue, and LHP Braxton Garrett is also sidelined a should issue of his own.
After posting a respectable 84-78 record in 2023, Miami is off to the worst start in franchise history with a 7 game losing streak to kick off their year. Only the Oakland A’s and Colorado Rockies sport worse run differentials than the Marlins’ -27 figure.
Miami will look to snap their skid against the St. Louis Cardinals on April 4th.
Photo: Dan Lundberg. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.