The Dodgers announced on Tuesday that top pitching prospect River Ryan will undergo Tommy John surgery. He will miss the remainder of the 2024 season and possibly the 2025 season while he recovers. Ryan, who posted a 1.33 ERA in his first four major league appearances, went on the injured list over the weekend after suffering a UCL sprain in his last start.
Ryan’s 2024 season was already known to be over, but Tommy John surgery is a worst-case scenario after his UCL injury. An internal splint procedure might have provided a shorter recovery time, but he will require a full ligament replacement, which typically puts pitchers out of action for more than 14 months. Every rehab process is different, and there’s always the chance Ryan will heal a little faster than the average pitcher, but a 12-month recovery is usually the bare minimum for pitchers who require Tommy John surgery.
Ryan, 25, was selected by the Padres in the 11th round in 2021. He went to the Dodgers in a trade that now looks like a robbery, sending first baseman/outfielder Matt Beaty back to San Diego. (Beaty played in 20 games with the Padres, hitting .093/.170/.163 before being released.) Ryan hadn’t even made his pro debut and signed a $100,000 bonus at the time, so he was hardly a high-end talent. Ryan’s mere ascension to the majors would have been a player development success story for Los Angeles, but instead he rose to the point where he is considered one of the most promising pitching prospects in the sport. Ryan climbed as high as No. 21 on FanGraphs’ Top 100 talent rankings and is No. 99 on MLB.com’s Top 100 list.
The reasons for this rise aren’t particularly hard to see. Ryan spent most of the 2023 season in Double-A, pitching a decent 3.33 ERA in 97 1/3 innings before being promoted to Triple-A at the end of the year. He got hit hard in those two starts, but returned to Triple-A this year and dismantled opponents in five starts with a 2.76 ERA, 28.8% strikeout rate and 9.1% walk rate. He was limited in the minors this season with a shoulder injury. Still, Ryan finished in the majors with a 3.22 ERA, 28.5% strikeout rate and 10% walk rate in parts of three professional seasons after being traded to the Dodgers organization.
Ryan is the latest Dodgers pitcher to land on the injured list in a difficult season for their rotation depth. Los Angeles started the year with Clayton Kershaw on the injured list, knowing that Tony Gonsolin would miss most/all of the season as he recovers from Tommy John surgery last summer. Since then, they have seen Emmet Sheehan (Tommy John operation) and Dustin May (esophageal surgery) have to undergo surgery, which means the end of the season, while Yoshinobu Yamamoto (rotator cuff strain) and Walker Buehler (hip and elbow) land on the bench with their own long-term injury problems. Young player Nick Frasso (shoulder surgery) and Kyle Hurt (Tommy John surgery) are also on the minor league injured list and out for the year. Last year’s right-hander Bobby Miller made just seven MLB starts and was ineffective with both the Dodgers and Triple-A as he battled a shoulder injury of his own.
With this long list of injuries, the Dodgers have a rotation that includes Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone and new addition Jack Flaherty. Buehler is expected to return from the injured list later this week, but he has posted a 5.84 ERA in eight major league starts and has a 5.01 in another eight Triple-A starts this season — his first year back from Tommy John surgery in 2022. He offered a glimmer of hope in his most recent rehab start, throwing 5 1/3 innings and holding the Rangers’ Triple-A club to one run on one hit and three walks with five punchouts.
Because Ryan was injured while pitching at the major league level, he is on MLB’s injured list and will spend his 2025 rehab on the major league injured list. While he recovers from the injury, he will receive major league salary and service time. That gives him at least one full year of service during his recovery, putting him on track for arbitration in the 2027-28 offseason and free agency after the 2030 season. Of course, future optioned assignments could change either or both of those trajectories, and for now, the immediate focus will simply shift to the long process of getting the talented young right-hander back to full strength, with an eye toward a return in late 2025 or early 2026.
