{"id":743935,"date":"2026-07-05T18:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T18:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/743935\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T18:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T18:03:28","slug":"guardians-prospect-khal-stephen-to-undergo-ucl-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/743935\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians Prospect Khal Stephen To Undergo UCL Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Guardians pitching prospect <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=stephe000kha&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-05_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Khal Stephen<\/a> will undergo a UCL-related surgery this week, team president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti told reporters (including <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/tim_stebbins\/status\/2073804957300441199\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">MLB.com\u2019s Tim Stebbins<\/a>).\u00a0 Dr. Keith Meister is performing the surgery, and it won\u2019t be known until the procedure is underway if Stephen will need an internal brace or a full Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n<p>A brace procedure has a usual timeline of 12-13 months, while a TJ surgery is in the 13-14 month range.\u00a0 Stephen\u2019s ability to pitch during the 2027 season is therefore more likely if he needs only an internal brace, yet regardless, it\u2019s still a tough setback for the right-hander in his second season of pro ball.<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Jays selected Stephen with the 59th overall pick of the 2024 draft, then dealt the young righty to Cleveland in a one-for-one swap for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/biebesh01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-05_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Shane Bieber<\/a> in advance of last year\u2019s trade advance.\u00a0 It was a win-now move for the Jays that helped them almost win a World Series title, and unexpectedly a second year of Bieber\u2019s services after the veteran passed on an opt-out clause last fall.\u00a0 (Bieber\u2019s arm issues this season have subsequently made his decision a lot less surprising in hindsight.)<\/p>\n<p>Since Bieber was still recovering from a Tommy John surgery at the time of the trade, the Guardians chose to save some money and add a promising arm in Stephen by swinging the deal.\u00a0 The 23-year-old Stephen looked to be making good progress in posting a 3.44 ERA, 20.9% strikeout rate, and 9.8% walk rate over 55 innings with Double-A Akron this year before his elbow issue sent him to the injured list last month.<\/p>\n<p>MLB Pipeline ranks Stephen as the fifth-best prospect in Cleveland\u2019s farm system, while Baseball America is a little less optimistic with their 12th-place ranking.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have been out of the question for Stephen to make his big league debut even before the end of 2026 if he\u2019d stayed healthy, yet the 2028 season might now be the more realistic target date for Stephen\u2019s first crack at the Show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guardians pitching prospect Khal Stephen will undergo a UCL-related surgery this week, team president of baseball operations Chris&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,32105,4],"class_list":["post-743935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-khal-stephen","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116868690962871524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743935","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=743935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}