Yankees Pitcher: Latest Season-Ending Injury ‘Very Frustrating’

The hits keep coming for major league pitchers.

Jonathan Loáisiga will have season-ending surgery on his right elbow, the New York Yankees said. The 29-year-old reliever stated that he will meet with Dr. Keith Meister at an undetermined date. The particular nature of his surgery is still to be decided.

“It’s very frustrating,” Loáisiga told journalists. “I am going to lose the rest of the season. It’s a difficult situation to cope with. At the same time, there is a will within. I want to be out there pitching. You must utilize that as inspiration and rely on it to take you through a situation like this.”

The Yankees expected Loáisiga to be an important member of their bullpen if he could stay healthy. He has only allowed six earned runs in 20 appearances over the last two seasons and has a 19-11 record with a 3.44 ERA in six major league seasons.

The crucial word with Loáisiga—and many other hard-throwing pitchers these days—is if. He missed the majority of the 2023 season and completed it on the injured list due to the same elbow ailment.

In the previous week alone, two additional Major League Baseball stars, Shane Bieber of the Cleveland Guardians and Spencer Strider of the Atlanta Braves, discovered they suffered ulnar collateral ligament tears. Pitchers who suffer serious elbow injuries are generally out for a year or more while recovering from surgery.

Last season, Yankees ace Gerrit Cole was 15-4 with an American League-leading 2.63 ERA and a league-high 209 innings worked. The 33-year-old right-hander took on baseball’s most demanding workload while throwing his fastball at an average speed of 96.7 mph — a number that has remained essentially unchanged since Cole’s rookie season a decade ago.

Cole is currently sidelined for 1-2 months owing to his own elbow issue.

The pattern of injuries among the game’s finest pitchers has been too strong to ignore. Tony Clark, the Major League Baseball Players Association’s president, responded Saturday by condemning MLB’s refusal to “acknowledge or study the effects” of a reduced pitch timer rule implemented last December.

The Major League Baseball (MLB) responded by pointing to “an independent analysis by Johns Hopkins University that found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries.”

Cole isn’t the only one who is sick of the debate. Many outside observers have been satisfied to let MLB and its union escalate their animosity, avoiding the temptation to take a side in the fight. However, hearing a significant player describe the dialogue as unhelpful may only help calmer heads prevail.

Meanwhile, the Yankees must go on without two of their best pitchers.