Right-hander Clarke Schmidt has a tear in his UCL and will probably undergo Tommy John surgery, Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters (including Joel Sherman of the New York Post). Schmidt will miss the remainder of the 2025 season and will miss perhaps all of the 2026 season, given the usual 13-15 month recovery timeline for TJ procedures.
It is a worst-case scenario for Schmidt, who went on the 15-day IL yesterday with what was described as forearm tightness. Schmidt told reporters that he had been dealing with the issue for a month, which perhaps makes his recent performances all the more impressive. The righty carried a streak of 28 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings in June but ran into trouble in his last two starts, when Schmidt allowed seven earned runs over nine combined innings against the Athletics and Blue Jays. In that latter outing against Toronto on Thursday, Schmidt was pulled after just three innings of work.
Rotator cuff tendonitis kept Schmidt from making his 2025 debut until April 16, but he’ll now wrap up his season with a 3.32 ERA over 78 2/3 innings. Though his strikeout and walk rates were nothing special, Schmidt did a very good job of limiting hard contact, and benefited from a .232 BABIP. That batted ball luck is reflected in Schmidt’s 4.24 ERA, but the 29-year-old did well to help stabilize a Yankees rotation that was already dealing with a number of injury issues.
Unfortunately, Schmidt now joins ace Gerrit Cole and reliever Jake Cousins as Yankee pitchers who have undergone a Tommy John procedure this season. In the bigger picture, this is the second TJ surgery for Schmidt, who also went under the knife in 2017 when he was still a college pitcher at South Carolina. He also missed a big chunk of the 2021 season due to an elbow strain, and missed about half of last season due to a lat strain.
Since this is Schmidt’s second Tommy John surgery, chances are that his rehab process will sit on the longer end of the usual timeframe. This means Schmidt might only be available for the very end of the 2026 season, and it is probably more likely that he isn’t back until Opening Day 2027. Schmidt is arbitration-controlled through the 2027 season, so the Yankees might consider a non-tender this winter and then look to re-sign the righty to a two-year deal with most of the salary pushed into 2027 when Schmidt is healthy.
More to come…
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