{"id":563746,"date":"2026-02-10T07:20:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T07:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/563746\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T07:20:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T07:20:35","slug":"diamondbacks-reliever-lost-for-year-following-shoulder-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/563746\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamondbacks reliever lost for year following shoulder surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/arizona-diamondbacks\/253\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Diamondbacks;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Diamondbacks<\/a> lefthander Andrew Saalfrank underwent shoulder surgery on Monday, Feb. 9, a procedure that will cost him all of the 2026 season, general manager Mike Hazen said.<\/p>\n<p>Saalfrank was expected to be a significant part of the Diamondbacks\u2019 bullpen this year. In 28 games last season, he logged a 1.24 ERA in 29 innings.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Saalfrank posted on Instagram about the surgery, which was performed by Dr. Keith Meister.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust another bump in the road of living my dream,\u201d wrote Saalfrank, who missed all of the 2021 season following Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n<p>The Diamondbacks have just two other healthy left-handed relievers on their 40-man roster: Brandyn Garcia and Philip Abner. The team traded lefty Kyle Backhus to the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/philadelphia-phillies\/246\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Philadelphia Phillies;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Philadelphia Phillies<\/a> to clear a roster spot in December.<\/p>\n<p>Lefty A.J. Puk will open the season on the injured list as he recovers from elbow surgery from last year.<\/p>\n<p>The specifics of Saalfrank\u2019s shoulder procedure were not immediately available.<\/p>\n<p>Saalfrank missed half of the 2024 and 2025 seasons due to a gambling suspension.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/story\/sports\/mlb\/diamondbacks\/2026\/02\/09\/diamondbacks-reliever-lost-for-year-due-to-shoulder-surgery\/88593972007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Diamondbacks reliever lost for year due to shoulder surgery;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Diamondbacks reliever lost for year due to shoulder surgery<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diamondbacks lefthander Andrew Saalfrank underwent shoulder surgery on Monday, Feb. 9, a procedure that will cost him all&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404],"tags":[1118,13491,146,22,4314,5,34935,38,21334,11540,4,25,48052,10957,6408],"class_list":["post-563746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-a-j-puk","tag-andrew-saalfrank","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-arizonadiamondbacks","tag-baseball","tag-brandyn-garcia","tag-diamondbacks","tag-kyle-backhus","tag-mike-hazen","tag-mlb","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-philip-abner","tag-shoulder-surgery","tag-tommy-john-surgery"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116045128089469917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}