Marlins starter Max Meyer is headed for a season-ending labrum repair in his left hip, reports MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola. The procedure comes with a six-to-eight month recovery timeline, so the process could linger into the early portion of Spring Training. He is already on the 15-day injured list and will move to the 60-day IL once the Marlins need a 40-man roster spot.
Meyer, the third overall pick in 2020, has yet to really establish himself in the big leagues because of injury. He was one of the sport’s top pitching prospects when the Fish called him up in July ’22. He made two starts before his elbow gave out and sent him for Tommy John surgery. That wiped out the entire following season. The Marlins bounced him between MLB and Triple-A Jacksonville last year, a sequence that was ostensibly about managing his workload after surgery but also prevented him from reaching two full years of big league service by the end of the season.
The 26-year-old righty had been in Miami’s big league rotation this year. He got out to a brilliant start to the season, turning in a 2.10 earned run average through his first five starts. He fanned 14 hitters (tied for second by any pitcher in a game this season) over six scoreless innings against the Reds on April 21. It looked as if Meyer were in line for a breakout, but his production tanked over his final seven starts. He allowed more than seven earned runs per nine with a dramatically reduced 16.5% strikeout rate until landing on the injured list earlier this month.
Meyer was clearly not at full strength, as he’d shown none of the electric stuff he did early in the year. Manager Clayton McCullough said at the time of the IL placement that Meyer had been pitching through the injury for a few starts. His year will end with a somewhat misleading 4.73 ERA across 64 2/3 innings.
Miami has lost Meyer and Braxton Garrett to season-ending surgeries. Ryan Weathers will be out at least into August with a significant lat strain. All three have flashed promise but battled too many injuries to give the Marlins the elite rotation they’ve envisioned behind Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez. Meyer will fall a little shy of the three-year service cutoff. He’ll qualify for early arbitration as a Super Two player but won’t make much more than the league minimum next season because of his limited body of work. He’s under club control until the 2029-30 offseason.