UTK Flash: Sale to Surgery

Red Sox announce Chris Sale will have Tommy John surgery

This one is confusing.

The Red Sox announced on Thursday afternoon that Chris Sale will undergo Tommy John surgery. This is after three separate opinions from top doctors that he would not need surgery just three weeks ago. There is no word yet who will perform the surgery.

What changed? I have two theories. First, there was a small tear, less than 10%, and they attempted to heal it with rest, therapy, and PRP. There have been successes using this in the past, with Masahiro Tanaka probably the best-case scenario. It may not have worked, the tear may have gotten worse or just not gotten better, and boom, surgery is now the best option.

The second is a bit conspiratorial and I hope it’s wrong. We know baseball isn’t coming back for a while, but what if the Red Sox know that it’s well into the summer (or longer?) Sale wouldn’t have surgery if it wasn’t necessary, but if it was one of those “it’s slightly torn and maybe it gets better”, a long layoff without games is essentially reducing the cost of the surgery in terms of missed time.

Regardless, Tommy John surgery is a known process. Sale should be back in roughly a year with no change in his future outlook. The surgery has an 80-90 percent success rate, depending on how it’s measured, and the range of return times is between nine and eighteen months with the normal being twelve to fourteen months.

I’ll have more on this in the next UTK.