MAY 14: The Braves announced that Minor underwent shoulder surgery today to repair the labrum in his shoulder. As David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweets, initial MRIs didn’t reveal a tear in the labrum, but upon undergoing exploratory surgery, Dr. Neal ElAttrache did indeed find damage in the labrum, which has now been prepared. The Braves’ press release indicated that Minor is expected to be ready for the 2016 season.
MAY 12: Braves left-hander Mike Minor will undergo surgery on his left shoulder that will likely end his season, reports Bill Shanks of FOX Sports 1670 and Scout.com. MLB.com’s Mark Bowman adds that the surgery will take place this week (Twitter link).
Minor, 27, landed on the 60-day disabled list earlier this month and had yet to show “measurable improvement” as of that report. The former No. 7 overall pick has not pitched this season and spent a portion of the 2014 season on the shelf due to inflammation in his left shoulder as well. That injury led to a diminished performance in terms of both bottom-line results (4.77 ERA) and time spent on the field (145 1/3 innings), but Minor still topped the Braves in an arbitration hearing this offseason, netting a $5.6MM salary. (Atlanta had filed at $5.1MM.)
Minor’s rather significant arbitration earnings cloud his future with the Braves. Last December, the Braves cut bait on both Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen, non-tendering the pair rather than paying similar salaries to the ones they earned in their lost 2014 campaigns. Of course, both of those right-handers were recovering from Tommy John surgery, not shoulder surgery, so the situations are not entirely similar. Medlen and Beachy were both going through their second Tommy John, and it was known that they would be out through the early portion of summer, at least. While shoulder problems are often actually more severe for pitchers than Tommy John, we don’t yet know the type of procedure that Minor will undergo, and therefore it’s impossible to know specifically what kind of timeline will come along with his rehab.
With Minor absent from the rotation, Eric Stults and spring trade acquisition Trevor Cahill joined Julio Teheran, Alex Wood and Shelby Miller in the rotation to begin the season. However, Cahill’s early struggles have led to a bullpen role and a rotation audition for the highly touted Mike Foltynewicz, who was acquired from Houston in the Evan Gattis trade.
It’s ok. Hart gave up on this season anyway. He should be ready by the arbitrary 2017 season when the Braves win the WS like Hart believes!
Minor won’t be back with the Braves next season.
I sure hope not.
After taking the Braves to arbitration and now season ending surgery I’m thinking he done as a Brave. Likely non-tender candidate, especially with all the newly acquired arms in the system.
That may happen especially given the recent events of non tendering Beachy and Medlen. However, I hope they keep him.
Why?
Why i hope they keep him? Because he is a solid pitcher. Just like Medlen was, and Beachy had potential of being. There is no guarantee the young pitchers in the minors will end up being better than Minor. Keep the depth rather than being forced to acquire guys like Stults and Cahill.
One year closer to getting rid of Minor who is thought of highly by the Braves even though he’s only had one good year.
I really don’t think the current FO ever thought highly of him. He’s never been consistent and follows a long line of less than stellar Braves 1st rd picks. Save yourself disappointment and don’t look up who was drafted after him…(sad face)
Mike Trout :'(
Mike trout 🙁
Surprise! Not. He needs to give back that extra arbitration money he scammed out of us.
Scammed? The dude got injured doing his job.
Hes not healthy he needs some time off
2009 Draft.
Pick #7 Atlanta choose Mike Minor and now he’s basically DONE.
Pick #25 Angels select some HS kid name Michael Trout.
Oh, what could have been.
What are you going to do, right? I think the Braves MO of drafting the best pitchers available really comes at a price. I know they really wanted Zack Wheeler out of Paulding Co., but NYM took him a pick before. So it looks like they went with the next best available college arm (Vandy’s Mike Minor). You can tell this was their MO from the Frank Wren era because they did the same thing with 1st rd selections for FSU’s Sean Gilmartin (Rule-3 castoff, now a Met) and OK St’s Jason Hursh. I really wish they focused on building OF depth, but you could tell since they acquired Upton, Upton and Heyward, maybe they thought they wouldn’t need that kind of minor-league OF depth…if things went the way they should have gone.
Ironically, they missed that same year on TX high school P, Shelby Miller, and now he’s the most productive arm of 2015. However, I’m glad they didn’t go local and select Kennesaw State P, Chad Jenkins, who is a bullpen piece, at best, now for TOR.
Wheeler was drafted by the SF Giants, not NY Mets. He was traded to the Mets for Beltran in 2011.
What a horrid trade btw….shew.
People like you beat that horse to death and always will. You think that if the Braves had kept that pick at 25, that’s who they would have drafted and that couldn’t be further from the truth. There is absolutely no way to know if Trout was who the Braves would have taken because they didn’t pick then and you CAN’T put two and two together and assume that would have been the choice based on the way it played out for a completely different organization.
Besides, Wren still had an overhyped and overrated Jordan Schafer in the system who had just been sent back down but they were still high on for some reason even though the only good season he ever had in the minors centered around a PED suspension. And seeing how his pro career has turned out, it was highly probably he was juicing early on.
with the 8th,9th,10th…. Its not like Atlanta was the only team that passed up on Trout. Whose to say that he would develop the same way in Atlanta as he had in Anaheim. Lot of what if’s, if everyone knew that he wouldn’t have fallen to 7, he would have been the 1st pick easily.
Hindsight is always 20/20, though. A lot of people passed on Trout, in large part because as a player from the Northeast he just didn’t play as much as other prospects in that draft. Scouts just didn’t get a lot of looks at him his senior year, so he was a question mark for a lot of teams.
You know Mike Trout wasn’t even the Angel’s first pick in the 2009 draft, the teams elected Randal Grichuk ahead of Trout.
Teams had a lot of concerns about Trout who was a pitcher and SS in high school before switching to the OF and crushing the ball.
Mets trade some kid named Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano…pretty stupid too, I’d say.
Is it a Minor surgery?
I don’t see why Braves fans are so low on Minor, he’s a workhorse who improved considerably each year from 2010 to 2013, peripherals included. Last year he was awful, but clearly he was injured, the guy is a solid #3 when healthy, I hope Atlanta holds onto him at least to built his value and flip him when Jenkins or Wisler is ready.
It all depends on if you’re right that last year’s bad numbers were due to injury or not. There’s a good case for it being possible, but it’s not hard to see the flip side and believe that his one good year in ’13 was an outlier and the other three-ish seasons are his real talent level. It’ll be interesting to see which the organization believes to be true based on whether they cut him this offseason or not.
Minor is disliked by the braves fans because they see the bulk of his games. He has a decent fastball and change up and good control. His breaking ball is most often a slider but some time comes over like a curve and he throws more in the dirt then he gets in the air to his catcher some games. It is frustrating to watch a player continue to struggle and seeing him do this often is why he is disliked. He had sharp control of his slider one night and took a no hitter to the seventh, i hope that is not forgotten. It takes left handed pitchers longer to develop some times so i still have hope he will be back with the braves. He will be coming off shoulder surgery, which can be worse than tj, but its not a second tommy john so i am not concerned that medlen and beachey were non tendered. Being left handed should get him another look.
The braves need to give up on minor