Under The Knife 3/27/26
Proudly Unsustainable for 24 Seasons
First, some housekeeping.
As of April 1, I’m going to turn off the yearly subscription option. The reason is that with an impending work stoppage, I do not want to commit to doing much of anything during that period. I’m hoping that the 25th year of Under The Knife will be about baseball and injuries, but I’m also well aware it might not start on time, or at all. I don’t feel it’s right to take money if I’m not writing and I don’t have the infrastructure to do refunds. What I can do, if needed, is shut down recurring payment for a bit, which would be the plan. So, until April 1, I’m dropping the yearly price back down to $49, if you want to do that now. Monthly will remain the same $5 it always has been and I thank those of you that have chosen to support my work. It surprised me the other day that I’ve done 900 of these. In my time at Baseball Prospectus, I wrote 998 pieces, so I’ll likely surpass that here sometime this season.
Then, let’s do a quick update on what various Injured List definitions mean here at the start of the season. There are no changes to them, but it’s good to remind ourselves or teach the new people.
The injured list isn’t really about days. It’s about roster math disguised as medicine. At the simplest level, the 10-day and 15-day IL are short-term tools. Position players go on the 10-day, pitchers on the 15-day, a distinction that came back in the last CBA because teams were gaming the shorter list with pitchers who needed more time anyway. The idea is flexibility. You take a guy who can’t go, open a spot on the 26-man roster, and keep things moving. He still counts on the 40-man, still accrues service time, and still exists in your plans. 
The key is that “10” and “15” are minimums, not expectations. Players routinely blow past that. Teams backdate the move up to three days, steal a couple days, and treat it as a rolling evaluation period. If the player heals quickly, great. If not, you’re not committed to anything longer than the minimum. It’s the day-to-day IL, even if the calendar says otherwise.
The 60-day IL is different. That’s not medical optimism, that’s an organizational decision. Once a player goes there, he’s off both the active roster and the 40-man, which is the real lever.  You’re not just acknowledging a longer injury, you’re buying a roster spot. That’s why you’ll see teams hold off on using it until they need the space. It’s less about the player and more about who they want to add.
There’s also a one-way door element. You can move a player from the 10/15 to the 60, but not back.  Once you’ve made that call, you’ve committed to the timeline, or at least the optics of it. For you, the takeaway is simple. The shorter lists are about uncertainty and flexibility. The 60-day is about certainty or at least enough of it to reshape the roster. The injury matters, the context matters, but the roster need often matters just as much and sometimes more.
Now, on to the injuries and make it Free Friday as well. I hope many of you will consider upgrading to a membership!
JACKSON CHOURIO, OF MIL (fractured hand)
Of all teams, the Brewers should have everyone in #paddedgloves - a smart team, a great medical staff, and a small enough margin that losing someone like Jackson Chourio for a month could make the difference between playing in October and playing golf in October.
Chourio took a ball off the hand during the World Baseball Classic and kept playing. That alone shouldn’t raise eyebrows. It happens all the time, and more often than not it’s written off as a bruise, some swelling, maybe a day or two of soreness. Hands get hit, players tape them up, and the game keeps moving.
The third metacarpal is right in the middle of the hand, tied directly to grip and bat control, but a small fracture there doesn’t always announce itself. The pain can be diffuse. Swelling can take time. Grip strength might dip just enough to notice, but not enough to stop a player who’s used to hitting through discomfort. In a tournament setting, with limited imaging and a priority on staying on the field, it’s easy for something like this to get treated as a soft-tissue issue until it proves otherwise.
Chourio returning to his team and continuing to play fits that pattern. A nondisplaced fracture can hold together under short-term stress. The swing still works, the bat still gets through the zone, and adrenaline fills in the gaps. What changes is the margin. Mishits sting more. The hand doesn’t quite stabilize the same way. Over time, the risk shifts from playing through pain to making the injury worse or delaying healing.
Once the fracture is identified, the decision becomes straightforward. The hand is too central to everything a hitter does to leave it in that gray area. Let it heal cleanly, restore full strength, and then build back from there. Playing through it wasn’t surprising. Shutting it down now is the part that protects the season.
YU DARVISH, SP SDP (sprained elbow)
Yu Darvish landing on the restricted list instead of the 60-day IL tells you this is as much about accounting as it is about anatomy, and maybe more. The elbow is real. He had another elbow surgery and wasn’t going to pitch in 2026 regardless. In a normal situation, that’s a clean 60-day IL move. You park him there, acknowledge the timeline, and keep paying him while you use the roster spot. That’s the standard path, the one teams use when the story is fully contained inside the injury.
The restricted list lives outside that framework. It still removes him from the 40-man roster, still keeps his rights with the Padres, but it changes the financial piece in a way the IL never does. Players on the restricted list aren’t entitled to salary and there’s no fixed timeline attached to the designation. That flexibility is the point. It allows both sides to operate in a space where the outcome isn’t fully defined, whether that’s continued rehab, a potential contract restructuring, or even the possibility that Darvish doesn’t come back at all.
There’s also some history here that makes this feel less abrupt. Darvish has previously chosen the restricted list during a personal absence, opting not to be paid while away from the team. That context matters, because this looks at least partially like a negotiated decision rather than a unilateral one. There have already been quiet discussions about voiding or reshaping the remainder of his deal and this move keeps that door open without forcing a conclusion.
For the Padres, the benefit is immediate and tangible. Darvish was owed roughly $15 million this season and removing that obligation, even temporarily, creates room in a payroll that has been tight by design during the sale process. That kind of space isn’t abstract. It can be redirected, and one obvious place is the rotation. SoCal native Lucas Giolito has been sitting on the market as a mid-tier upside play, the kind of arm that could stabilize some innings without requiring a top-of-market commitment. The Padres don’t need to replace Darvish’s ceiling. They need to cover his absence and the restricted list gives them a way to do that without pushing further into a tax situation or salary dump they’ve been trying to manage.
For Darvish, the designation reflects uncertainty more than anything else. There’s no rehab clock, no expectation of activation. It’s a pause, one that acknowledges both the physical recovery and the open question of whether he wants to take on the full climb back at this stage of his career. For the Padres, it’s a bet that flexibility now is worth more than clarity later.
One last thought: I asked myself “Is Yu Darvish a Hall of Famer?” My initial instinct of no is born out by the B-Ref metrics, but my next question is whether Darvish could have been. He’s had a number of injuries, including two elbow reconstructions that held him back. I’m not sure that missing a peak season or a step down in stuff is enough to solely hold him back, but it’s a reminder that very few Tommy John guys are in the Hall of Fame. We’ll have more in the next decade, but it’s an interesting thought experiment as to why that’s the case now.
JOE MUSGROVE, SP SDP (sprained elbow)
Joe Musgrove did everything right on the calendar. Surgery in October 2024, a full lost 2025, and a clean runway into 2026 that should have put him back into something close to normal. That’s the model teams build around. Twelve to fourteen months, steady progression, controlled ramps, and then a return that looks almost routine. The elbow didn’t follow the script.
Swelling during an early exhibition outing is the kind of signal teams watch for all the way through rehab, but seeing it this late in the process carries a different weight. Early in recovery, inflammation is expected. The graft is new, the tissues around it are adapting, and the workload is increasing. By the time a pitcher is facing hitters again, the expectation shifts. The elbow should tolerate stress, not react to it.
Musgrove being shut down immediately fits the current approach. No one pushes through that anymore, not with this kind of investment and not with the knowledge of how setbacks compound. He’ll reset, likely back into a throwing progression, then build back toward rehab starts once the elbow settles. That part is familiar.
What stands out is the timing. Tommy John surgery is often framed as a solved problem, a predictable detour rather than a career threat. The reality is less clean. Success rates are high, but they’re not absolute and even successful outcomes don’t always follow a straight line. Late-stage inflammation raises questions about how the elbow is handling load, whether it’s mechanical, structural, or simply part of a longer adaptation curve.
For the Padres, this shifts Musgrove from a plug-and-play return to a variable. For Musgrove, it’s a reminder that the final stage of rehab is where uncertainty shows up again. It’s often true that until someone’s on the mound, throwing at 100 percent, we don’t know whether they’ll handle it.
TANNER BIBEE, SP (inflamed shoulder)
Tanner Bibee was warming up in the sixth inning when he felt something in his shoulder. The manager and the medical staff came out and Bibee quickly left the game, with word after that he had “shoulder inflammation.” There’s obviously going to be imaging and more testing, but Bibee was reasonably positive after the game. Bibee told the media this is a new issue, not something lingering, and that he felt it “off and on during the game.” He had gone 78 pitches and was effective enough, giving up only solo homers for his runs. The velocity was normal and he didn’t lose anything, with his last pitches a big strikeout on Cal Raleigh.
I won’t speculate here but Bibee’s been consistently inconsistent since coming up, but it hasn’t been because he’s been injured. He made 31 starts the last two years and was expected to do much the same. Even with the team on the road, I’d expect the Guardians will have the imaging done on Friday with a decision quickly on next steps. The best case would be simply something that was grabbing or muscular, while there’s a lot that could be considered worst case that ranges to season ending. There’s zero information beyond the public right now. The Guardians do have rotation depth in Logan Allen, who was just sent to Columbus, but could step in for Bibee’s next start, a tough draw against the Dodgers.
JEREMY PENA, SS HOU (fractured finger)
Jeremy Pena being “not ready” while taking live batting practice across town is the kind of detail that tells you exactly where he is, even if the label doesn’t quite match. Part of it is the simple fact that the Astros have their affiliate about 20 miles away and schedules had them both home.
A fingertip fracture lives in that gray space between available and playable. The bone itself can heal relatively quickly, especially if it’s nondisplaced, but the fingertip is where hitters actually feel the bat. It’s loaded with nerve endings, tied directly into grip pressure and barrel control, and even small disruptions show up immediately. You can swing, you can take BP, but the difference between contact and quality contact is often that last bit of feel through the hands. Until that returns, the hitter isn’t really back.
That’s why this setup is interesting. The Astros didn’t just stash Pena on the 10-day IL and call it a timeline. They kept him active enough to get reps in a controlled environment while avoiding the pressure of major league results. Triple-A across town becomes a bridge. He can face live pitching, test the finger, adjust day to day, and do it without the consequences of being in the lineup every night.
It also lines up cleanly with the roster decision. Carlos Correa at shortstop gives them stability, and more importantly, removes urgency. They don’t need Peña at 80 percent, so they’re not going to take the risk that comes with pushing a hand injury too soon. The 10-day IL is often used to buy time, but here they’ve effectively created their own version of that without starting the clock.
Fingertip injuries don’t look like much on imaging absent the possible shattering that is … yeah, really bad. They show up in the swing. The Astros are waiting for that to come back, not just the X-ray.
JP CRAWFORD, SS SEA (inflamed shoulder)
JP Crawford’s shoulder has been nagging since the start of camp, enough that the Mariners sent him for imaging and ultimately a cortisone shot just days before Opening Day. That’s always a tell. You don’t inject late in spring unless you’re trying to quiet something down quickly, and once that happens, the path to the IL is usually already mapped out. 
The official expectation is short. A couple weeks, maybe just the minimum, and he’s back. That’s the optimistic read, and there’s some support for it. Imaging didn’t show structural damage, and Crawford has played through similar shoulder irritation before. Shoulders don’t always cooperate with timelines, especially when the issue is inflammation tied to workload and repetition. The injection can calm things down, but it doesn’t always solve the underlying irritation. That’s where these turn into rolling absences instead of clean recoveries.
For a team with real expectations, that distinction matters. Seattle isn’t trying to survive April. They’re trying to position for October, and Crawford’s value is in the stability he provides every day at short. If that becomes intermittent, the calculation shifts.
Colt Emerson is sitting right there and the organization has been deliberate about not rushing him. The plan was development, not necessity. That plan holds as long as Crawford’s absence stays short and clean. If this drags into multiple IL stints or the shoulder limits him when he’s back, the conversation changes quickly.
At some point, “soon” becomes “now.” The Mariners don’t need either of their shortstop possibilities to be perfect. They need one, or both, to be playable. The bar lowers when the alternative is uncertainty and shoulder issues have a way of creating exactly that.
ANTHONY VOLPE, SS NYY (strained shoulder)
Anthony Volpe is coming back from a labral repair in his left shoulder, and that’s one of those injuries that tends to look cleaner on a surgical report than it does on a stat line. The Yankees had him play through it for months before finally shutting it down, and by the time he got to October, the decision wasn’t really optional anymore. The timeline since has been what you’d expect - four to six months just to get functional, closer to six to nine before you trust the strength and stability again, which is why he’s staring at a return somewhere around late April into May. 
The comps here aren’t especially comforting. Labrum guys tend to fall into two buckets. You get the Fernando Tatis Jr. outcome, where the bat comes back quickly and the arm eventually follows, or you get something closer to Miguel Andujar, where the offensive profile never quite re-centers because the shoulder never fully stabilizes. Volpe’s in a slightly different lane because it’s his non-throwing shoulder, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. The front side matters for everything - bat path, torque, even how comfortably he finishes swings. If that side isn’t right, you’ll see it in the contact quality before you see it in the box score.
What makes this more than just a rehab story is the clock around him. Jose Caballero can play. Not a star, but functional enough that the Yankees don’t have to force anything. George Lombard Jr. is coming and not slowly. The organization doesn’t need to make a decision today, but they also don’t have infinite patience if the production doesn’t show up.
This is where you have to be a little blunt about it. Volpe doesn’t just need to get healthy. He needs to come back looking like the answer. The Yankees have lived through too many “we think he’ll be fine” situations that never quite resolved. If the bat is light and the defense isn’t elite, the job starts to drift from assumed to contested. There’s no perfect timeline here, and no perfect body type or developmental arc that guarantees it works. But there is a window. Volpe is still inside it. He just doesn’t have as much room as it used to feel like he did.
Quick Cuts:
There were a flood of IL moves, as there always are ahead of the season. None of them really surprised me, so I won’t discuss them here … Trey Yesavage (shoulder) threw in a backfield game on Wednesday (against Max Scherzer!), so there’s no data, but two sources said things were positive. Ross Atkins said his velocity was up, compared to recent outings … Zach Wheeler (TOS) is scheduled to go three innings (60 pitches) for his start Saturday in Triple-A. The indication is that he’ll need two more outings … Jackson Holliday (wrist) starts the season on a rehab assignment in Norfolk. I’m told it could be “quick”, though it will have to be at least ten days … Sal Stewart got absolutely smoked on the wrist on a very hard grounder to first. He was checked and in obvious pain, but stayed in the game. No word on whether x-rays were done, but looks like he got lucky … Lars Nootbar (heels) did go to the 60-day IL, so my positivity last time out was a bit too positive … If you’re technologically inclined or like sports (or both?), please check out an article I did over at Six Colors. I give my pitch to Apple on what they should do about sports.
Ok, this is good:
