Ramón Laureano Undergoes Hip Surgery, Most Likely Done For Season - MLB Trade Rumors

The Padres are likely to be without left fielder Ramón Laureano for the remainder of the season. He underwent labrum surgery on his right hip on Friday, relays Annie Heilbrunn of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The team hasn’t officially ruled him out for the year but noted that this injury typically requires a 4-5 month recovery. San Diego transferred him to the 60-day injured list this evening. Laureano first had an issue with his right hip five years ago. He missed a few weeks in June 2021 with a hip strain while still playing in Oakland. Laureano had managed to play through any subsequent discomfort but evidently found the current issue too serious to avoid surgery. There’s a decent chance this will mark the end of his Padres tenure. San Diego acquired Laureano and Ryan O’Hearn in a package deal from the Orioles at last summer’s trade deadline. O’Hearn was a rental, while the Padres had a $6.5MM club option on Laureano that looked like a bargain. He was one of the team’s best hitters after the trade, batting .269/.323/.489 over 50 games until a broken right index finger ended his season. It remained an easy call for San Diego to exercise the option and plug Laureano into the Opening Day lineup as their left fielder. He got out to a quick start, batting .288 with four homers and nine extra-base knocks through his first 19 games. It seems the hip became increasingly problematic in the back half of April. Laureano would hit .147 with three homers over his next 34 contests before going on the injured list on Tuesday. Left field now becomes yet another issue for an already woeful offense. The Padres have been the lowest-scoring team in MLB. Over the past month, they have an unfathomably poor .191/.270/.325 team batting line. A diminished version of Laureano was a big part of that, but nearly the entire lineup has struggled. Ty France, Gavin Sheets and Fernando Tatis Jr. have been above-average hitters in the last 30 days. Everyone else who is still on the roster has been at least 34 percent worse than league average, by measure of wRC+, over that stretch. That includes fourth outfielder Bryce Johnson, who’s in the starting lineup for the second straight night. The 30-year-old Johnson ran an inflated batting average on balls in play to some small sample success last season. That hasn’t carried over this year. The Padres called up 25-year-old Jase Bowen earlier in the week; he’s 1-8 with five strikeouts in his first three career games. Manager Craig Stammen said left field will feature a combination of Sheets, Johnson, Bowen and light-hitting utility player Samad Taylor (link via Kevin Acee of The Union-Tribune). Sheets is already an everyday player between the corner outfield, first base, and designated hitter. He probably shouldn’t play the outfield, but the Padres have no choice but to keep him and France in the lineup to get any kind of offense. Jackson Merrill is locked in as the everyday center fielder and hopefully beginning to break out of his season-long rut. Tatis is moving between right field and second base. If the Padres remain in the hunt for a Wild Card spot into July, they’ll need to find a way to add multiple bats. Left field will probably be the priority in that search. Mickey Moniak, Trevor Larnach, Matt Wallner, Taylor Ward, Jo Adell and Jacob Young are speculative outfield trade candidates who could be available closer to the deadline. Laureano will hit free agency at the end of the season. He’ll almost certainly be looking at a one-year reclamation contract for his age-32 campaign. He’d have been well positioned for two or three years if he’d stayed healthy and hit at anything close to last season’s level, making this a particularly frustrating injury for him personally.