The two latest Atlanta Braves pitchers dealing with elbow issues are now beginning to deal with those issues as both Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep are taking the route of surgery. According to a report from Braves beat writer Mark Bowman of MLB.com, Spencer Schwellenbach has already underwent surgery on his elbow to hopefully deal with the “loose bodies,” while Hurston Waldrep will undergo surgery on Monday to deal with the “loose bodies” in his own elbow.
As you can imagine, no timeline doesn’t exactly figure to be the most encouraging news for these two as far as a baseball prognosis is concerned. I think the best case scenario would be for Schwellenbach to miss maybe half of the season but with Waldrep, everything appears to be up in the air. Either he’ll likely follow Schwellenbach in returning in the latter portion of this season or this could be it for him. We really don’t know at this particular moment in time.
Either way, with both pitchers undergoing surgery, it’s clear that the Braves are going to be missing both of them for a significant period of time. While Waldrep only figured to be one of the competitors for the final spot in the starting rotation (which, again, figures to be a real and actual competition and not a case of simply giving it to an outside signing or trade acquisition), Schwellenbach figured to be a core piece of the rotation going forward. His spot will have to be filled and I suppose we’ll have to keep a close eye on spring training to see who ends up being the frontrunner to replace Schwellenbach in the rotation once the season starts.
For now, the Braves are at least aware of the fact that they’ll be down two young starters for a significant portion of this season. Hopefully that number stays at two and doesn’t start to balloon at any point in the near future.
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