{"id":660887,"date":"2026-04-03T14:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/660887\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:30:17","slug":"red-sox-johan-oviedo-to-injured-list-with-elbow-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/660887\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox’ Johan Oviedo To Injured List With Elbow Strain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Red Sox announced a slate of roster moves Friday morning, including an ominous 15-day IL placement for right-hander Johan Oviedo<\/a>, who\u2019s been diagnosed with a right elbow strain. Right-hander Tyler Uberstine<\/a> has been recalled from Triple-A Worcester and will be making his major league debut whenever he first gets into a game. Boston also placed righty Garrett Whitlock<\/a> on the paternity list, where he can spend a maximum of three days. Right-hander Zack Kelly<\/a> has been recalled in a corresponding move.<\/p>\n

Oviedo, 28, came to Boston in the offseason trade that sent touted outfield prospect Jhostynxon Garcia<\/a> to Pittsburgh. He was terrific through four spring starts (11 1\/3 innings, two runs on eight hits and six walks with 14 strikeouts) before being tagged for six runs in his final spring tune-up. Oviedo\u2019s official Red Sox debut was ugly, however; the Astros tagged him for four runs on six hits (including a pair of homers) and a walk in 3 2\/3 innings of long relief.<\/p>\n

More alarming than the bottom-line results was the pronounced decline in Oviedo\u2019s velocity. He\u2019s averaged better than 95 mph on his four-seamer in his big league career and sat 94.4 mph this spring as he built up for the season. His fastball averaged 93 mph flat in that outing against Houston. Oviedo\u2019s velocity on all of his pitches was down across the board. Manager Alex Cora said after the game that the team was confident Oviedo was healthy (link via MassLive\u2019s Christopher Smith<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a conversation with him today and there\u2019s a few things that the pitching department has noticed,\u201d Cora said at the time, seemingly implying that the issue was mechanical rather than physical. Clearly, the team\u2019s thinking has changed. Cora said this morning that Oviedo has undergone both x-rays and an MRI (via Ari Alexander of 7News<\/a>). The MRI results are being compared to prior MRIs.<\/p>\n

The Sox have yet to provide further updates on Oviedo. That the injury is termed a \u201cstrain\u201d (indicating it pertains to a muscle or tendon) rather than a \u201csprain\u201d (pertaining to a ligament) is perhaps a reason for some cautious optimism, though flexor tendon strains frequently require lengthy absences in their own right. Until the team provides further updates, all that\u2019s known is that Oviedo will be shelved for at least the next 12 days. (IL stints can be backdated up to three days, so long as the player has not appeared in a game in that time; Oviedo last pitched on March 30.) It bears mentioning that Oviedo missed the entire 2024 season and much of the 2025 campaign due to Tommy John surgery performed in December of 2023.<\/p>\n

Uberstine, 26, was added to the Red Sox\u2019 40-man roster this past November. He pitched 120 2\/3 innings of 3.58 ERA ball between Double-A and Triple-A last season, striking out 26.9% of his opponents against an 8% walk rate. He\u2019s worked in a variety of roles during his climb through the minors, pitching as a starter, as part of a piggyback tandem, in long relief and in short relief.<\/p>\n

Back in February, the Boston Globe\u2019s Tim Healey took a look<\/a> at Uberstine\u2019s remarkable journey to simply end up in pro ball. Baseball America\u2019s Geoff Pontes did the same<\/a> last August. Uberstine was barely used on his high school team, was turned away from both the club team and actual D-I team at USC as a sophomore, and wound up transferring to Northwestern simply hoping to land a spot on the fringe of the roster, as he\u2019d missed being part of a team during his early time in college. Uberstine posted a 5.90 ERA in his final season at Northwestern and was the Red Sox\u2019 19th-round pick in 2021, signing for a $97K bonus. Fans of any club will want to check out those pieces from Healey and Pontes for a look at the determination that led to this morning\u2019s promotion for Uberstine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Red Sox announced a slate of roster moves Friday morning, including an ominous 15-day IL placement for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,4506,5416,58600,15821],"class_list":{"0":"post-660887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-garrett-whitlock","10":"tag-johan-oviedo","11":"tag-tyler-uberstine","12":"tag-zack-kelly"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116341259549633480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660887","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=660887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}