UTK Flash 3/23/23
Rhys Hoskins down with knee injury
Rhys Hoskins is coming off surgery on his meniscus, but had made a solid recovery. On Thursday, ranging back from his post at first base, Hoskins had a non-contact injury, going down in pain and being carted off. Before the cart, Phillies medical staff was seen testing Hoskins’ knee using a standard test used to check the ACL for laxity, giving some indication of what happened. Hoskins will go for an MRI, but early reports via Jason Stark said that Hoskins was on his feet in the clubhouse, which isn’t necessarily positive as it might sound.
[NOTE: In my haste to get this post out, I looked at my note wrong and said that both his meniscus repair and the injury today were on the same (left) leg. His meniscus repair was on the right knee, so the paragraph below is moot. I leave it in place, but you can basically ignore that.]
The first question is whether the meniscus issue is related. Indeed, it might be the issue, if it isn’t an ACL sprain. The meniscus was repaired in December and he only got back on the field at the start of March. That’s normal for the recovery, but meniscus repairs have a relatively high failure rate. The “all-cause” rate is around 20%, but that’s not specifically for athletes, let alone baseball players. It’s higher in basketball, as would be expected. The fix for repair failure is either a revision (re-do the repair) or a removal, which has a higher success rate, but some consequences down the line. Removal also has a much quicker rehab time, measured in weeks. If the repair failed, that could mean Hoskins is back much quicker.
If it is an ACL sprain that requires repair or reconstruction, he would be out for the remainder of the ‘23 season on timing. Even an Internal Brace repair is six months, so at best Hoskins could be back for the playoffs and these repairs remain rare, even more so on elite athletes. I don’t know of one that’s been done on a male American pro athlete. A standard reconstruction would have a baseball player back around the six to nine month mark, with full healing out to a year. We’ve seen a number of players like Ronald Acuna do well at this mark and given the timing, Hoskins would have 10-11 months of recovery ahead of playing, and 12 to games, so the rehab could be done conservatively.
Losing Hoskins is a tough blow for the Phillies. They have some internal replacements, including Alec Bohm and Kyle Schwarber. There’s also been some suggestion that Bryce Harper could play there to protect his elbow, a la Albert Pujols’ move. Harper’s first return would be at DH, but the Phillies would like to use that slot to “half-rest” JT Realmuto and to keep Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos from both being in the field. The MRI will tell us how long Hoskins is out, but the injury gods already seem angry at the Phillies. Playoff hangovers are real.
More tomorrow in Under The Knife.