Spring Training Injury Update: All the Unprintable News That Fits

One of the things that happens when pitchers and catchers report to camp is that managers update everyone on any unreported offseason developments. Unfortunately, few of those updates are about fun new cocktails they tried or animals they saw on vacation. It brings me no pleasure to tell you I have yet to see one single beat reporter file a story about a manager who saw a really cool sea turtle while snorkeling. Most of those developments are injuries, which meant that Tuesday was at once a glorious rite of the coming spring and an unbearably heavy dump of unpleasant injury news. Today we’re going to focus on the depressing dump, so courtesy of Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner, here’s a gorgeous picture that captures the eternal hope of spring training as a little pre-casualty report treat to soften the blow.

Wow. That was beautiful. Thank you, Andy. Now we’ll get miserable, but please remember that it could always be worse. We could be back in the 1880s, when the unpleasant health updates weren’t about who broke their hamate bone, but about who died of consumption. (The preceding sentence was originally intended to be a joke, but guess what.)

We have to start in Toronto (or rather Dunedin) because a disconcertingly large portion of these injury updates came from Blue Jays manager John Schneider. In one fell swoop, Schneider announced that Anthony Santander would be undergoing surgery on Wednesday to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder, Bowden Francis will be undergoing Tommy John surgery after suffering an “acute injury” while throwing a pitch, and Shane Bieber will likely miss the beginning of the season due to forearm fatigue. The Blue Jays must be gladder than ever that they went out and made so many additions this offseason (and also that treatment for tuberculosis has come so far in the past 150 years).

Toronto signed Santander to a five-year $92.5 million deal last offseason. At the time, it felt like a risky move for a 30-year-old slugger with negative defensive value and just one three-win season under his belt. In order for it to work out, Santander would really need to deliver in the first couple years. Instead, he got off to one of his trademark slow starts, then missed most of the season after crashing into a wall and dislocating his shoulder. He returned right at the end of the regular season, but appeared in just five postseason games before a back injury laid him low again.

Re-injuring the left shoulder will reportedly cost Santander five or six months, which means we’re talking about a return in July or August. “He was resting and rehabbing in November and December, then he kind of had a setback when he started ramping up with his hitting earlier in January,” said Schneider. “He came over to the complex, got checked out and did everything we could to avoid this. At this point, after what we dealt with last year and in talking with Tony, this is the best possible way to get him back to 100 percent. This is unfortunate timing, obviously.”

General manager Ross Atkins told reporters that the Blue Jays aren’t significantly involved in looking for another outfielder. They have Daulton Varsho locking down center field, Nathan Lukes and Davis Schneider platooning in left, and Addison Barger in right, with Myles Straw as a defensive replacement and Joey Loperfido as a backup. With Santander out, George Springer is expected to get almost all of his playing time at DH rather than the corner outfield. That’s not a bad spot to be in. Our Depth Charts have the Blue Jays ranked in the top half of the league at all three outfield spots and at DH. Still, losing a player with 40-homer power hurts, especially when the team will also be going without Bo Bichette, who signed with the Mets last month.

Francis got his first chance to start in the majors in 2024, and he ran a 3.30 ERA with a 4.36 FIP and a 3.41 xERA. The Blue Jays were expecting big things from him in 2025, but he got off to a disastrous start and missed the second half of the season with a shoulder impingement (and a couple other setbacks during his recovery). He didn’t look quite right either; his velocity was down and stuff metrics downgraded just about all his offerings. Nobody had given up hope on Francis, but with Kevin Gausman, Bieber, and Trey Yesavage returning to go with free agent signings Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce, the team wasn’t necessarily expecting to rely on him the way it had hoped to in 2025. Still, Francis is already 29 years old, and losing an entire year to UCL reconstruction must be completely devastating.

The Bieber news is scarier in its own way, both because of the role he was expected to play and because of the uncertainty in the prognosis. The 2020 Cy Young winner missed most of the 2024 and 2025 seasons with Tommy John surgery, arrived in Toronto at the trade deadline, and pitched well enough down the stretch. Between the end of the regular season and the playoffs, he made 11 starts and one relief appearance, posting a 3.66 ERA and a 4.40 FIP. He was expected to be a major part of the rotation, and according to Atkins, that expectation remains. Both the Blue Jays and Bieber expect the right-hander “to pitch a lot and have a significant impact on our entire season,” said the GM. However, he declined to get into how long exactly Bieber might miss, and a delayed ramp-up due to forearm fatigue is a somewhat scary temporary diagnosis.

Right now, it means that Bieber won’t be ready in time for the start of the regular season, but there’s no way of knowing how long his ramp-up will be delayed, and it’s not at all uncommon for pitchers in these circumstances to start then stop again when something goes wrong. It absolutely could be nothing, but we’ve heard plenty of stories that start this way and end with underperformance, lengthy IL stints, or Tommy John surgery. Last year, Toronto relievers Zach Pop and Erik Swanson started the spring in similar wait-and-see fashion, and things only went downhill for them. There really is nothing to do but wait and hope Bieber’s situation improves.

In the meantime, it looks like Eric Lauer and José Berríos have a chance to find their way back into the rotation. The Blue Jays will also get prospect Ricky Tiedemann back from Tommy John surgery, though his innings will be managed very carefully and he’s still never pitched for the big club. With Cease and Gausman at the top, the Toronto rotation ranks seventh in our Depth Charts even after the bad injury news, but this is still a major blow to their depth. No one can be certain whether Yesavage will be able to repeat his electric debut or exactly what Ponce will look like upon his return from the KBO. Toronto’s depth will be much more important this year, especially if Bieber ends up missing serious time or looks worse than he did in 2025. It might be a good idea to think about a Chris Bassitt Max Scherzer reunion.

Now it’s time for a not-so-quick hamate bone whip-around. To get you in the mood, let’s start with an excerpt from Jeff Sullivan’s 2013 classic one-act play, “An Interview With the Hamate Bone.”

Interviewer: What is it, exactly, that you…
Interviewer: …do?
Hamate bone: break
Interviewer: Pardon?
Hamate bone: break
Interviewer:
Hamate bone: we break
Interviewer: Is there anything else? Any function?
Hamate bone: naw
Hamate bone: breakin

When the stupid hook on your hamate bone breaks off, you need surgery to remove it. According to Baseball Prospectus’ Recovery Dashboard, the average player returns from the surgery after 42 days, with a median return time of 38 days. We’re talking about roughly six weeks, which means right around Opening Day.

We’ll start in Port St. Lucie, where Francisco Lindor will undergo surgery to remove his stupid left hamate bone. That wasn’t a certainty. He experienced pain over the past few days, and the injury was initially deemed to be a stress reaction, but the Mets announced on Wednesday that an evaluation determined that surgery would be required. Lindor was already going to miss the World Baseball Classic due to recovery from debridement surgery on his right elbow, but he was expected to start the season healthy. “At this point, even if it does require surgery,” said president of baseball operations David Stearns on Tuesday, “we would remain optimistic that Francisco would be back for Opening Day.”

Simply put, there’s no replacing Lindor. The future Hall of Famer has put up at least 5.0 WAR in each of the last four years and never once finished with fewer than 3.9 in a full season. After adding Jorge Polanco at first base, Marcus Semien at second, and of course, Bo Bichette at third, the Mets have plenty of infield depth. It’s possible that Bichette could temporarily delay his switch over to third base for a bit, with Mark Vientos or Brett Baty filling in at the hot corner, but it seems more likely that Ronny Mauricio or Vidal Bruján would be tasked to fill in for Lindor at short. Regardless, the concern isn’t really that Lindor will miss significant time, but that the surgery could sap some power or otherwise hinder him at the plate, at least at the beginning of his return.

Now we head out to Arizona, where Corbin Carroll broke his stupid right hamate bone during live batting practice on Tuesday. Like Lindor, Carroll is an irreplaceable star. He should be back close enough to Opening Day, but he was set to play in the World Baseball Classic for the United States, which will now have a meager outfield consisting of Aaron Judge, Byron Buxton, and Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Carroll is also supposed to be the best player on a Diamondbacks team that expects to compete for a playoff spot. However, it doesn’t have much outfield depth after losing Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to a torn ACL in September and trading Jake McCarthy to the Rockies in January. Right now, RosterResource sees Alek Thomas and Jorge Barrosa platooning in center with Jordan Lawlar in left (at least until Gurriel is ready to return) and Carroll in right. We should note that Lawlar has exactly three innings of outfield experience under his belt, and they came this winter in the Dominican league. The lineup looks a little weaker overall, too. Last year, the Diamondbacks started the season with Josh Naylor at first and Eugenio Suárez at third; this season they’ll have Carlos Santana and Nolan Arenado. They also traded away Blaze Alexander. They really need Carroll to be himself, so having him miss spring training and start the season coming off hand surgery is not exactly ideal.

Lastly, Orioles second baseman Jackson Holliday broke his own stupid right hamate bone in the batting cage last Friday. He’ll have surgery to remove it Thursday, and the Orioles have already said that he’ll be on the IL for Opening Day. Good thing the O’s traded for Blaze Alexander from the Diamondbacks (one day before Holliday’s injury, as it turns out), especially because third baseman Jordan Westburg is also hurt. Westburg “tweaked his right oblique” three weeks ago, said president of baseball operations Mike Elias. Westburg should be ready well before Opening Day. He’s already running, and he may get some work at second during spring training. Baltimore also has Jeremiah Jackson, who plays both third base and outfield, and put up a (BABIP-aided) 117 wRC+ last year in his major league debut. OK fine, one more little taste:

Interviewer: So you break on purpose? To injure hitters?
Hamate bone: thank you for joining us
Interviewer: Why on earth…?
Hamate bone: hate baseball
Interviewer: Hate baseball?
Hamate bone: we hate baseball
Interviewer: And this is how you make your statement?
Hamate bone: not enough people playing jacks
Interviewer:
Hamate bone:

That’s it for hamate bones (hopefully), but we’ve got more bone betrayals to discuss. Braves right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach will miss at least the first two months of the season due to bone spurs in his right elbow, which is bad because he pitches with his right elbow (and other parts of his right arm). Despite early reports that he wouldn’t need surgery, he’s now preparing for a procedure and hopes to return in June. As Chris Towers of CBS Sports noted, though, some recent pitchers like Joe Musgrove and Walker Buehler have had worse outcomes after this surgery. “He was doing great,” said manager Walt Weiss. “He was throwing bullpens, and everything was great. The last bullpen he threw was a week and a half ago or so, and it wasn’t great. That’s when the red flags went off.”

Losing Schwellenbach is a major blow to an Atlanta rotation that is starting to look pretty thin. AJ Smith-Shawver had Tommy John surgery in June and his return timetable isn’t yet known. The Braves will need to rely on Chris Sale, who won the Cy Young in 2024 and was nearly as unhittable in 2025, but also missed a couple of months with a fractured ribcage and has exceeded 20 starts just once in the past five years. Spencer Strider is also propping up the projections with a projected 3.85 ERA despite the fact that he didn’t look at all like himself upon his return from Tommy John surgery in 2025. The Braves will also be depending on Reynaldo López, who pitched fantastically in 2024 but was limited to just one appearance last year by shoulder surgery. If the Braves are going to pitch well, they’ll likely need big contributions from Hurston Waldrep, who looked electric in a short sample in 2025, and Bryce Elder, who has struggled mightily over the past two seasons.

There’s certainly a path to success here. Schwellenbach could only need the two months to recover and could keep up his high level of play when he returns. Sale could stay healthy and continue dominating. Another year of distance from surgery could help Strider regain at least some of his previous form. Waldrep could keep pitching lights-out. López could look like his old self, and Elder could pitch decently. It’s just hard to predict all of those things happening at once.

Alright, we’re into the lightning round now. Tigers right-hander Reese Olson will miss the season after surgery to repair the labrum in his right shoulder. Zack Wheeler is keeping the rib that was removed from his body during thoracic outlet surgery in his closet “in a little case.” Orion Kerkering is a bit behind schedule due to a Grade 1 hamstring strain. I have a crick in my neck from shoveling snow, but I expect to play through it. Biceps tendon inflammation has Josh Hader a few weeks behind in his ramp-up and may cause him miss Opening Day. Jay Jaffe is experiencing forearm inflammation, also due to shoveling snow. This is why they don’t hold spring training in the northeast. Yainer Diaz sprained his left foot during winter ball in December but is participating in baseball activities.