Both a left and right arm in the Baltimore Orioles rotation need repairs, and it will cost the team two pitchers for the rest of the season.
Orioles left-hander John Means and right-hander Austin Wells will undergo season-ending surgery to repair torn UCLs in their throwing arms, general manager Mike Elias told reporters Friday to Jake Rill of MLB.com.
It has reportedly yet to be determined whether these surgeries will be Tommy John surgery. Both pitchers have undergone the dreaded procedure – Wells in 2019, Means in 2022 – but there may be other options, such as the brace surgery that has become increasingly favored in recent years. A second Tommy John surgery is notoriously difficult to come back from, requiring more intensive rehabilitation and a longer timeline to return to the mound.
The Orioles entered Friday with a 35-19 record, two games back of the first-place New York Yankees, and the third-best starting pitcher in the MLB with a 3.03 rating. Means and Wells combined to start just seven of those 59 games.
Without them, Rill speculates that the Orioles will move forward with a rotation of Corbin Burnes, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, Cole Irvin and Albert Suárez.
Is this it for John Means and the Orioles?
This latest news is a major blow to Means in particular and could spell the end of an Orioles tenure that started off promisingly.
Resources seemed like a real building block for Baltimore in 2019, a time when building blocks were hard to come by for the tank organization. He finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting with a 3.60 ERA in 155 innings, a welcome surprise considering the soft-throwing southpaw was an 11th-round pick who peaked at No. 29 on MLB Pipeline’s Orioles prospect list .
He played through the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season and threw a no-hitter in May 2021, but ended up on the injured list a month later with a shoulder issue, the first of a series of health issues that required TJ surgery undergo. two years ago.
Now the 31-year-old Means is sidelined for the rest of the season and will almost certainly sit out much of 2025 as well, with no guarantee he’ll be the same when he returns. It’s very bad timing considering he’s set to hit free agency this season.
Players in this situation have a few options. They can spend the rest of their time with the team, hit free agency and hope someone will give them a two-year contract, with the understanding that the hopefully healthy second year is what the team pays for. They could also enter free agency and wait until they’re healthy before finding a team.
There’s also the possibility of a cheap extension, should the Orioles want to keep Means and hope he can still help them push for a World Series. Given the team’s stocked farm system, this might not be a good fit.
