The Red Sox announced today that left-hander Chris Murphy underwent a successful reconstruction of the left ulnar collateral ligament, also known as Tommy John surgery. It was reported a few weeks ago that the lefty had damaged the ligament and he is already on the 60-day injured list.
Murphy, 26 in June, made his major league debut with the Sox last year. He tossed 47 2/3 innings over 20 appearances with an earned run average of 4.91, though better underlying numbers. His 23.1% strikeout rate, 8% walk rate and 44.7% ground ball rate were all pretty close to league average but his .321 batting average on balls in play and 67.2% strand rate were on the unlucky side. His 3.70 FIP and 3.88 SIERA were each more than a run better than his ERA.
That big league work was all out of the bullpen but he had been working as a starter in the minor leagues. With two remaining option years, he could have either continued working out of the big league bullpen or perhaps been sent to Triple-A for some rotation depth. The Sox didn’t need to make that decision once the ligament damage was discovered. Now that Murphy has gone under the knife, he will unfortunately have to miss the entire season and likely a decent chunk of 2025 as well.
If there’s one silver lining for Murphy, it’s that he will remain on the injured list all year, collecting big league pay and service time. He’ll look to get healthy and get his career back on track next year, likely around his 27th birthday.
For the Sox, this adds to a growing pile of injuries to their rotation options. Lucas Giolito will also miss the 2024 campaign after undergoing elbow surgery while Nick Pivetta recently landed on the IL due to a flexor strain. For now, the club has Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock in four rotation spots, though that group is fairly lacking in experience. None of those four hurlers have more than 265 career innings at the big league level nor have they ever hit 160 in an individual campaign.
The Sox are hoping Pivetta’s issue is mild but they will need to cover his rotation spot for a few turns regardless. Both Josh Winckowski and Chase Anderson made long relief appearances recently and could perhaps be stretch out fairly easily while Cooper Criswell and Naoyuki Uwasawa are the 40-man roster but currently on optional assignment.
Another one bites the dust!!!!
This is really getting out of hand.
Red – Welcome to the World of Max Velocity!
Things are really getting out of hand, now there are:
Lucas Giolito
Chris Murphy
Eury Perez
Noah Song
Spencer Strider
Shane Bieber
Jonathan Loaisiga
Ian Anderson
Sandy Alcantara
Connor Overton
Luis Garcia
Robbie Ray
Lou Trivino
JT Brubaker
Anthony DeSclafani
Tyler Mahle
Dustin May
Walker Buehler
Graham Ashcraft
Davis Martin
Jacob DeGrom
Shohei Ohtani
Liam Hendriks
Lance McCullers Jr
Sixto Sanchez
Marco Gonzalez
Kendall Graveman
David Peterson
Frankie Montas
Garrett Mitchell
Bryce Harper
Jeffrey Springs
Shane McClanahan
Tony Gonsollin
Drew Rasmussen
Shane Baz
Felix Bautista
Caleb Kilian
Clayton Kershaw
Emmet Sheehan
Brusdar Graterol
Trevor Story
Drey Jameson
Jackson Kowar
Josh Winder
of them.
Another
yes – Why do you want another? That’s not nice.
I don”t
Well …. you wrote “another” and it didn’t have a question mark after it ….. sooo ……
I would change the name but I can’t/don’t know how to
nvm… found it, sorry for all the messages lol
Well …. no worries, all good :O)
Today is the 50th anniversary of Tommy John’s surgery. It’s amazing how over the past 5 decades a surgery once deemed as a last resort to try to continue one’s career in the face of injury is now a rite of passage that many Pitchers have at even the high-school and collegiate level just to throw as hard as possible
First surgery was 9/25/74
Full Throttle!
Pitch Clock!
Tommy John!
There, I think I pretty much covered all the rest of the comments here,
Sacrifice the health of a human being at all costs to make a buck. To me, the PA and owners make it clear this is their objective. Whatever it takes to get more fanny’s in seats. And along the way make so many tweaks to speed things up, the game loses its character. Baseball is what it is. Stop screwing around with it. All this rigamarole has speeded up the game a whopping, on average, 22 minutes. Woop Dee Doo.
And then to have a main stream media insist that there is nothing to see here. Can you blame them? “Be careful not to bite the hand that feeds you” seems to be their collective MO.
I mean – isn’t that kind of the thing with all sports, always? It puts a toll on their bodies -for the entertainment of us regular folk.
Mainstream media is not suggesting there is nothing to see here – it’s journalists that uncover stories, and universities/professionals that do research and write white papers based on peer reviewed studies. Sure -pitch clock may be contributing, but let’s not forget how most professionals today become a one sport person at like 9, and focus on throwing the hardest and best. But again, this has always been the MO of sports.
Interesting article in the Athletic the other day. They interviewed both players and management for the article and listed more reasons than max velocity and the pitch clock. They also cited increased spin rate, smoothness of the balls, starting spring training at max effort instead of building up, and the year round conditioning, i.e. insufficient down time in the off season. What i found ironic was that the same people who were criticizing the search for maximum velocity, etc. were the same people who were either pursuing it as a player or pursuing players with it as management. In other words, they were claiming no responsibility in the matter.
Agreed. Mainstream media is not, from your post, “suggesting” there is nothing to see here and from my post, “insist” there is nothing to see here but they are human beings that instinctively and I’d say for the most part unintentionally sway towards the side that puts food on their table. It’s human nature. And that’s what I see here. Owners and the PA have manipulated things so much that it is increasingly jeopardizing the integrity of the game. And no one in the media is screaming “ENOUGH”.
Oops. This is a reply to above luclusiano post.
Jeff – No worries, I can’t see their post anyway because I have them or the poster before them muted. LOL
BTW …. MLB hasn’t had integrity since Fay Vincent was forced out in 1992. They looked the other way when steroids was at it’s peak, they took away the Atlanta ASG because of politics, they implemented the Ghost Runner because they want games to end ASAP, they increased the postseason berths to nearly half of all teams … I could go on, but you get the point.
I do think MLB will make changes to slow the number of max effort pitchers being cycled through MLB rosters, because MLB wants more offense.
Mid-month update – As of end of day on April 15th the Red Sox are now 9-8 through 17 games. The projection through April is 16-16 and it’s the only month when Boston has a non sub .500 record.
The break out is an excellent 7-2 against bad teams (LAA and OAK)
They are 2-3 versus average teams (SEA and CLE.
They are 0-3 versus BAL – the one good team they played.
Remaining in APRIL –
3 more with CLE in BOS
3 versus PIT in PIT
3 more versus CLE in CLE
3 versus CHC in BOS
3 versus SF in BOS
So 6 with CLE, 3 PIT, 3 CHC and 3 SF for a total of 15 games
The 9-8 record versus mostly bad teams is going to be a bit more difficult in the last 15 games. 1 win per series would leave them 2 games short unless they can take two of three from CHC and SF.
This is the easiest the schedule will get unless some big name players go down. A 66 game winning season will draw an excellent draft pick. I hope it works out better but it doesn’t seem likely if the injuries continue and the bull pan struggles.