Under The Knife 8/20/25

Cloudbusting

With Rob Manfred talking about expansion and re-alignment openly, it’s open season on things I’ve already been talking about here for a while. I’ve made my own suggestion about how re-alignment should work and I’ve said for a while that Nashville and Salt Lake City are the most likely expansion candidates.

That leaves us with the question of Las Vegas’s stadium and the Rays situation, but Manfred’s statement seemed oddly confident. With new ownership coming in with the Rays imminently, might Manfred already know something is in the works? While the team has said they’re committed to Tampa, they’re also not going to burn money forever and have no real local ownership. I don’t anticipate them heading up the interstate to Orlando or Jacksonville, but if there’s really no competition for expansion (and there’s not really), then moving the Rays gets both tougher and more valuable.

My guess? New ownership gets approved and in that initial announcement, we get the first drawings for Dream Finders Field, whether that’s in Tampa or a refresh of the St Pete small-park that fell through. Something entirely new and inspired? First things first, ownership should lock up Erik Neander and bring back some of the talent that went out from that fertile front office, or be bold and make their own direction, whatever that is. There’s enough interested in Neander that he’ll be fine either way.

The more interesting thing for me is what the expansion teams would be called. The Nashville Stars are locked in with the ownership group and that’s … fine. I hope Salt Lake can do better than Bees or Mammoth-adjacent riffs. The downside there? A team is likely to have to play in the new Triple-A stadium for a bit while they build or expand it. I’m just glad the path is clear now, aside from that pesky CBA and the TV deal that will fund it all. I had a whole “Utah Outriders” thing ready to go when I realized if they stunk a couple years, the stadium would be called the “Outhouse” so I hope whoever’s doing the branding is thinking ahead like I am.

There’s news on that front as well. This report from Kendall Baker is a stunner! Apple out altogether, NBC/Peacock in, Netflix involved (slightly), and MLB TV selling to ESPN as they get ready to launch on Thursday? (Before you get too excited, baseball fans, ESPN hasn’t figured out the NFL’s simple blackout rules, so this is no savior.) Holy cow, the next episode of Downstream is going to be a big one!

For now, on to the injuries:

ZACK WHEELER, SP PHI (blood clot)

Zack Wheeler underwent a procedure called thrombolysis on Monday in Philadelphia. I referred to this procedure on Foul Territory as “roto-rooter” and while flip, it’s not far off. A wire is run down the blood vessel and a drug is put right into place to break up the clot, while the wire can be used for some physical breakup as well. The skill to do this is pretty intense and one surgeon I spoke with about the procedure told me that he pictures himself as Luke Skywalker flying down the valley of the Death Star. However, the procedure is very routine and very successful in many cases, as well as being quite targeted. Done well, the clot is gone and all the remains is to see if it comes back, or comes back with activity. The immediate danger, that the clot moves, should be gone.

The hope here is that first, the clot is removed. Second, that this will be enough to correct things and avoid removing the rib. The risk is, they won’t know for sure until he starts to throw again and that timeline could be longer or work its way into next season. If he has the rib removed now, he’s not coming back for 2025, playoffs or not, but that’s already unlikely since he’ll be on blood thinners. Blood thinners are great, says the guy who had a heart attack 13 years ago, but they also stop the good clots, which can be problematic in sports. A comebacker that hits Wheeler like it did Jhoan Duran wouldn’t just bruise, it would bleed for hours, risking major complications. Let’s not even mention what happens if it hits him elsewhere.

Early indications are positive for Wheeler, per a source, but we’re at least a week from knowing if we’re looking at best case, what followup care will be needed, and a ways off from even discussing a return timeline.

FRANCISCO ALVAREZ, C NYM (sprained thumb)

I wrote this before there was clarification that Alvarez was not, in fact, having surgery yet and I think that you as readers need to see it. I can’t tell you, yet, as to why the Mets changed directions here, but I can tell you they think he will need surgery (per Carlos Mendoza) and that they’ll make a determination in two weeks, rather than now, which could move this timeline completely out of frame. So here’s what I wrote, for the record:

“Francisco Alvarez is headed for surgery and while that doesn’t sound like good news at all, the reason they’re doing it and quickly is to make sure he’s back for the playoffs. You’re going to hear six to eight weeks quoted widely, but UCL repair with internal brace is a very quick heal. In baseball, we’ve regularly seen players coming back in a month. Mike Trout? No problems with that thumb since and he could have come back in twenty-one days, though the Angels were reasonably conservative and held him back another two weeks.

The surgery is very simple, repairing the ligament when possible or getting a donor tendon, tacking it in place and overlaying the piece of SutureTape. Once the anchors are set, a matter of weeks, the bracing will protect the still healing graft. It’s stronger than the ligament ever was, so while there’s not zero risk, it’s extremely low and needs an unusual force to re-injure it. “Unusual force” happens on a baseball field, but not often.

For Alvarez, he’ll keep his hitting eye with “watch” sessions in the cage, where he watches pitches live or off the Trajekt, and swing in about three weeks. There’s been almost no complications with this since the ligament isn’t involved in grip per se. Now, the Mets just have to lock themselves into the playoffs, knowing they’ll have to do that without their young star catcher, who’s now got quite the list of hand injuries in his file.”

Again, while what I wrote no longer follows where the facts are going, I think it still bears reading for an alternate path. I don’t understand why the Mets changed or if they were always on this path, but I will effort to find out more information, as always. Some of it remains true, some of it does not, but I trust my readers to understand the difference. You’re smart.

More on big injuries with playoff implications, a bunch of the injury-of-the-year issues, and a confounding issue with a big start that could be the center of the next off-season. Really. Subscribe to read it all.