Julio Urias suffers Career-Altering Injury

Julio Urias is going to have shoulder surgery. Pitchers, man. They all fall down. This is just a terrible, terrible blow to the young core of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Urias is going to miss 12-14 months.

The injury occurred in a AAA Oklahoma City game on June 10th.

Urias threw a pitch. The anterior capsule in his left shoulder tore. He finished the inning and threw two more. A day later, his shoulder felt stiff. He did not know it yet, but his season was over. The banality of the particulars should not diminish their gravity. A bright future, perhaps the brightest in the organization, has turned cloudy.

Team doctor Neal ElAttrache will repair Urias’ shoulder on Tuesday. Urias will require 12 to 14 months of rehabilitation, according to Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations. Friedman defended the organization’s handling of the 20-year-old Urias, who was the first teenager to pitch for the Dodgers since Fernando Valenzuela, while acknowledging the severity of the injury.

Baseball is a weird thing. Rich Hill has been so up and down. It looks like the Dodgers have been blessed out of nowhere with a second ace behind Clayton Kershaw in Alex Wood. But a guy who figured to pay huge dividends down the stretch and towards helping the Dodgers make a long run into October is just erased at the snap of the fingers.

Not to be a downer, but his career could be over. This is the same injury that Johan Santana had that never allowed him to step on a mound again. You hate to paint that picture, but even if Urias comes back in two years, there’s a good possibility he will never be what he should have been. Young pitchers are a crapshoot. There is no case towards babying them at all; if the arm is goibg to blow, it’s going to blow.

If a guy shows promise and is healthy, just get him out there and let him throw innings at the big league level.