Red Sox: Tyler Thornburg to undergo surgery, miss entire season

The trade for the former Brewers reliever keeps getting worse.

If you’re one of the few still waiting to see Tyler Thornburg pitch in a Red Sox uniform, I’d stop holding my breath. According to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe, the righty is set to undergo surgery to treat thoracic outlet syndrome, which means that his season is likely over. Not that it really began in the first place.

For those paying attention to his embattled rehab process, it began to seem more and more likely that Thornburg would miss much more than the 60 days he was placed on the DL for. His potential activation date came and went on June 4 and since then, the Red Sox sent an 18-year old prospect to the Brewers as the player to be named later while Thornburg continued to incur setbacks in his recovery.

At some point, surgery just became an inevitability. You could say that the Thornburg deserves some credit for his persistent attempts to get back to full health, but this is an all-around disappointing situation. For one, no player, especially one in their prime, is willing to lose an entire season due to injury. Second, the Red Sox paid a steep price to acquire what was meant to be a key late-inning reliever.

What’s left to be said about the trade has been said 100 times. But just to reiterate, the Sox dealt third baseman Travis Shaw, infielder Mauricio Dubon, and infielder Josh Pennington, along with PTBNL Yeison Coca to the Brewers in exchange for Thornburg. Shaw is currently batting .299/.353/.534 with 11 home runs, 45 RBI, and a 127 OPS+ in Milwaukee. By comparison, only Mookie Betts (11) has reached double-digit home runs and no player on the Red Sox has touched the 40-RBI plateau so far.

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Dubon remains an enticing prospect, who is batting .286/.346/.369 with 28 steals at Double-A. As for Pennington and Coca, the former is a potential depth piece while the latter was ranked 25th in the Red Sox farm system when he was sent to Milwaukee.

Obviously, the Red Sox would be a much better team with Shaw starting at third base every day. Even when the trade was made, it was seen as an expensive price to pay, but one the Sox could afford to add to a potentially elite bullpen. The reality of the situation is that the ‘pen has been just fine without Thornburg, while third base has been an absolute black hole in the absence of Shaw.

The one potential bright spot of the deal is that the Red Sox retain control of Thornburg for more than just the 2017 season as he won’t become a free agent until the conclusion of the 2019 season. He did have a 2.15 ERA, 0.940 WHIP, and 34.2% strikeout rate in 2016. If that player’s the one they get in 2018, then the Red Sox will still be able to recover some of the value they gave up in the trade.

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But then again, there’s still no guarantee that he’ll retain the talent that made him such an attractive trade piece after the surgery.Matt Harvey of the New York Mets underwent a similar procedure on his throwing shoulder and hasn’t been the same since. That’s not to say that Thornburg won’t be able to recover and be ready to go for the start of next season, but there’s an inherent risk in any surgical procedure.

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