Trevor Story to miss significant time following elbow surgery
Chaim Bloom: Red Sox can’t bank on Trevor Story playing in 2023 after elbow surgery
The Red Sox announced on Wednesday that shortstop Trevor Story would miss significant time following internal bracing procedure on the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.
The 30-year-old was expected to be the club’s shortstop for the 2023 season following the departure of Xander Bogaerts. Instead, Story’s season is now in jeopardy.
“We’re not ready to put a timetable on [Story’s return] yet,” said chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom during a news conference Tuesday afternoon. “I certainly would not rule out a return sometime during 2023, but it’s also not something, at this stage, that we want to bank on.”
The Texas native had his procedure completed by Dr. Keith Meister, the Texas Rangers team physician and considered one of the best elbow surgeons in the country.
An Internal brace procedure is viewed as an appealing option by orthopedic surgeons when the tear in a UCL is considered modest in size and the tissue remains relatively healthy.
The timeframe a player can miss following this procedure seems to vary, Dr. Jeffrey Dugas told the Boston Globe that a 6-9 month timetable is likely for return for a position player. Dugas preformed the first Internal brace procedure back in 2013.
“It’s a procedure we have a lot of confidence in, but it’s still, in the scheme of things, a relatively new procedure,” Bloom said. “We don’t have decades and decades of sample to see exactly to be able to pin it down to the day or the week like in some cases, you feel like you can with a full Tommy John. We’ll just see how it plays out. I think the worst thing we can do is rush him to adhere to some arbitrary timetable. Knowing Trevor, he’s going to push us and he wants to be out there. But we’ll have to let it play out.”
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