Miami Marlins’ Sixto Sanchez to undergo season-ending surgery
The Miami Marlins’ top pitching prospect will not take the mound this season at the MLB level or in the minor leagues.
The Marlins announced Monday that right-handed pitcher Sixto Sanchez, the club’s top prospect and the No. 11 overall prospect in baseball according to MLB Pipeline, will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery. An MRI taken Friday after Sanchez felt soreness as he increased his velocity during his throwing program revealed that Sanchez has a small tear in the posterior capsule of his right shoulder.
The surgery has not yet been scheduled, but the Marlins anticipate Sanchez to be healthy for spring training next year.
“Awful news, starting with him as much as anything,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said Monday. “Obviously for us as an organization, I know we tried to take the conservative route with this and allow this thing to progress. Hoping that we wouldn’t get to this, but obviously we have. Now we just deal with it. Still feel bad for him. Obviously any player that has a surgery worries about their career.”
And so ends a frustrating four-and-a-half months for Sanchez, who dating back to spring training never really had the opportunity to get his feet under him.
He was hoping to build off a 2020 season in which he made his MLB debut and made nine starts, including two in the playoffs, and posted a 3.64 ERA with 41 strikeouts against 16 walks through 47 innings. He was hoping to work his way into the rotation with his fastball that hits triple digits and his changeup that misses bats and show the Marlins why he can potentially be the top-of-the-rotation starter they hoped to get when they acquired him from the Philadelphia Phillies in February 2019 as part of the J.T. Realmuto trade.
The opportunity never came this year.
It started when a visa issue delayed him getting back to the United States from the Dominican Republic and caused him to miss the first few days of spring training workouts in Jupiter. He was also sidelined for a few days of spring training because of a false positive COVID-19 test. He returned on March 6, threw a bullpen and a live batting practice session and then made his first Grapefruit League outing on March 15.
“It was a weird feeling,” Sanchez said at the time about the off-field delays to his spring. “I was getting ready. I was getting that momentum. I was getting ready for a live [batting practice] that week and then that false positive came out. It kind of ruined that momentum but things happen.”
He threw just 124 pitches over eight innings in three spring training games, so the Marlins had him start the season in Jacksonville at their alternate training site, where the top reserves spent the first month before the minor-league season began.
The major setback then took place on March 31, the eve of the 2021 season, when Sanchez reported “slight discomfort” in his throwing shoulder after throwing during a simulated game in Jacksonville. Sanchez was originally scheduled to throw five innings or 75 pitches. He threw two-plus innings when he started feeling the discomfort. He was removed from the game as an “extra precaution.” An MRI later revealed mild inflammation in the back of his right shoulder.
He spent about a month and a half throwing from flat ground before throwing first bullpen session on May 25.
“We’re in this for the long haul,” Marlins general manager Kim Ng said on May 22, three days before that bullpen session, about Sanchez’s rehab process. “I mean, it’s not just about sort of getting him back as quick as we can. Obviously we all want that, but this is really about what he means to this organization and what this means to his career so we have been cautious with him. But look at what he represents for us. We have to treat these guys with great care. We’re early in the season and the way we look at some of this is if we get Sixto back, he’s a great acquisition during a time when other clubs are trading three and four prospects to get that type of guy. For us it’s, again, the idea that anywhere from one to five in a great staff, to add that type of pitcher during that time is going to be a huge add.”
But instead of being a potential add, it was another setback.
Sanchez was promptly shut down after the bullpen session after once again experience discomfort in his shoulder. He essentially started his throwing program from scratch again after that.
The Marlins at the time said the setback was minor, but Sanchez has a history of setbacks dating back to before this season as well.
His 2018 minor-league season while in the Phillies organization was limited because of right elbow inflammation. When the Marlins acquired him before the 2019 season, they slowly built up his pitch count on the back fields during spring training and delayed his minor-league debut for that year. He reported to spring training in 2020 out of shape and did not appear in Grapefruit League action before spring training was shut down due to COVID-19.
And then came the series of setbacks throughout 2021.
“I’ve watched his bullpens. I’ve watched his throwing program.Some of the things that he was doing before they got better,” pitching coach Mel Stotlemyre Jr. said on June 5, “but there’s still a stall in his program. I’m not going to tell you he’s hurt, but I’m just going to tell you it’s not time to you know to move forward and press on the pedal and be thinking about rehab outings. It’s not there.”
Sanchez never got off flat ground again, stretching out to as far as 120 feet last week before ultimately being shut down.
This story was originally published July 5, 2021 at 4:15 PM.
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