Marlins outfield prospect Dillon Head will undergo season-ending surgery hip surgery, Isaac Azout of Fish On First reports. More specifically, Christina De Nicola of MLB.com reports that Head will require a left femoral acetabular impingement procedure. He’s expected to resume baseball activities in roughly three months, per Azout, though that mid- or late-September return to baseball activity won’t give him sufficient time to ramp back up to game action before the regular season concludes.
Head, 19, was the centerpiece of the early-season trade that sent Luis Arraez from Miami to San Diego. He appeared in only five games in Miami’s system this year — three shortly after the trade and another two following a lengthy IL stint — and will now lose the remainder of the season rehabbing from this surgery.
In 104 plate appearances with the Padres’ Class-A club prior to the trade, Head slashed .237/.317/.366 with a homer and three steals (albeit in seven attempts). He was inactive for ten days following the trade, then appeared in just three Class-A games with the Fish before landing on the injured list. Head went 4-for-12 with a triple and two steals in that brief look.
A first-round pick (No. 25 overall) out of Illinois’ Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School just last summer, Head is viewed as a speed- and contact-oriented outfielder whose wheels could help him develop into a plus center field defender as he continues to hone his reads. MLB.com ranks him fifth among Miami farmhands and credits him with true 80-grade speed. FanGraphs lists him third in Miami’s system behind Max Meyer and 2023 first-rounder Noble Meyer (who was selected 15 picks prior to Head in that draft).
Head was already viewed as a long-term development play at the time of the trade given his youth, and the loss of virtually his entire age-19 season will only further that likelihood. He’ll turn 20 in October and will enter the 2024 season with just 37 career games and 177 plate appearances at the Class-A level. Presumably, he’ll head back to Class-A Jupiter to open the 2024 season (health permitting) and work his way up the minor league ladder. A big league debut in 2025 doesn’t feel realistic, but late in the 2026 season or some point in the 2027 season he could feasibly be ready for a look in the majors.
You could say he’s Headed to the operating room.
If Dillon Head is having hip surgery, then I really feel bad for Dillon Hip…
Max Meyer, Noble Meyer, and Dillon Head…is the Meyer Lemon.
Pretty sure A.J. is back to his old tricks
“You shut your mouth when you’re talking to me…!”
Or maybe the Marlins didn’t subject him to numerous tests? (We all know they did.)
This may be difficult to believe for some, but sometimes, well… injuries just happen.
1 trade in and this Marlins new guy already made the worst trade he’ll probably make over the course of his entire Marlins tenure. Hip surgery is no small thing. Kid might be toast already
It’s a fairly common arthroscopic surgery and studies have shown most players return to full performance levels.
They are shaving off a piece of BONE. It’s not fairly common surgery. In fact, the reason he is having the surgery is an unusually shaped hip joint.
We don’t know yet and the surgeons won’t know until they get in there during the surgery if its pincer, cam, and combined. They won’t even know if there is cartilage damage until they get into the hip to grind down the bone.
He won’t play in a game at any level this year and anything concerning the hip is going to affect his speed. For a kid with well below average power, his speed is his only calling card.
I hope the best for him. He is a great kid that works hard at the game and only 19 so there is a chance that he rebounds to be as good of a prospect.
@Chemo850
Please don’t jinx it. We thought Mike Hill trading Miggy Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis in that awful trade was the worst trade he could do, but then came the Yelich trade many years later…and the other boneheaded moves in between.
“We Got No Food! We Got No Jobs! Our Dillon Heads’ Hip Is Fallin’ Off!!”
“That John Denver is full of $h¡+” remains one of my all-time favorite go-tos lol
I wish he played when they had Hudson Head and he’d have D Head on the back of his jersey.
A player whose major talent is his speed is having hip surgery.
Hope I’m wrong, but our other two position player prospects from the Arraez trade (Marsee & Martorella) are, so far, looking like busts. And now this? Just great. We can only hope for a full and complete recovery for young Dillon.
Do the Marlins NOT do pre-trade physicals for these players. That seems like something serious that should have been caught by their medical staff.
Well, from Bendix words, he said he felt they couldn’t get the same trade later, so I imagine he was too eager to get the trade done. It was a dumb trade even if Head stayed healthy, but this just adds on.
Bendix has really gambled his career reputation in the Arraez trade. If he does not build a top notch team, this Arraez will be talked about over and over and over again the same way the Miggy Cabrera with Dontrelle Willis, and Yelich trades were for Mike Hill.
It’s hard to recuperate from bad trades where you give away proven star players for garbage.