A surgeon removed and replaced a ligament in Kenta Maeda's right elbow on Wednesday. If only a similar procedure were available to Derek Falvey to heal the Twins' starting rotation.
Maeda underwent Tommy John surgery Wednesday in Dallas to restore his pitching arm, an operation that normally requires at least a year of rehab and recovery before a pitcher can resume his career. But the orthopedic surgeon, Rangers team physician Keith Meister, added a wrinkle that gives the Twins hope that Maeda could speed up his return: An internal brace around the new ligament to help it heal more quickly.
"It's a newer procedure. It's something that has been done on other pitchers," said Falvey, the Twins' president of baseball operations. "The early returns have been really positive around a new way of doing that surgery that helped trim that [year-or-more] timeline. Assuming everything goes according to plan, you give yourself a chance to be on the more aggressive end" of rehab, perhaps as quickly as nine or 10 months.
"I'm hopeful, for sure, based on the feedback from [Wednesday], the way the surgery went and the potential timelines," Falvey reiterated. "I'm hopeful that he's pitching at some point next year. But we won't know that for a number of months."
Meister has performed the internal-brace procedure roughly 50 times, on pitchers both professional and amateur, giving the Twins confidence that this is a long-term solution.
Maeda, 33, has pitched with minor damage to his ulnar collateral ligament for his entire six-year major-league career, but this year, the wear on the ligament, though never a complete tear, grew more pronounced. Maeda's fastball, roughly 92-93 miles per hour for most of his career, sat in the high 80s for much of this season. And on Aug. 21 in Yankee Stadium, the pain finally grew acute and Maeda was removed mid-game.
The pitcher hoped to avoid surgery, hoping his usual pain tolerance would be enough to keep him on the mound. The Twins realized that, painful as it is on a pitching staff already missing nearly a dozen pitchers because of injuries, there was little choice.
"We're better with Kenta. But I'll tell you this: We're even better with a healthy Kenta, and that's what we need to focus on," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "Hopefully when he's ready, we might see a version better than anything we've seen before, because they were able to go in there and clean some things up that he's been pitching with."
