St. Louis Cardinals LHP/OF Jordan Schafer to Have Elbow Surgery
Jordan Schafer‘s bid to become a two-way player has taken a major hit, as the non-roster invitee will have elbow surgery.
St. Louis Cardinals non-roster invitee Jordan Schafer was hoping to force management’s hand this spring and earn a spot on the Opening Day 25-man roster as a two-way pitcher outfielder, becoming the first player to fill that role at the major-league level since Brooks Kieschnick did so for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2004. Schafer now has a long wait ahead of him before he makes it back to the big leagues, though, as the Cardinals announced on Tuesday that he’ll undergo elbow surgery after leaving Sunday’s game in clear discomfort.
It’s yet to be determined whether Schafer will undergo full-blown Tommy John surgery or the new elbow ligament repair surgery that Cardinals physician Dr. George Paletta has popularized over the past year. If he were to undergo Tommy John, he’d surely be out of action until next spring at the earliest, but if he were to undergo the new procedure, he could perhaps be back on a mound by the late summer.
Schafer, a former starting outfielder who logged six major-league seasons with the Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros, and Minnesota Twins, converted to pitching last season while playing in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.
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After signing with the Cardinals, he was hoping to capitalize on the recent trend sparked by managers Joe Maddon and Bruce Bochy (a trend which revitalized a 1980s Whitey Herzog tactic) in which they’ve brought in a reliever, moved him to the outfield for one or a few plate appearances in order to maintain a platoon advantage, and then moved the pitcher back to the mound once his platoon advantage was restored.
Schafer’s lefthandedness, above-average defensive ability, and speed on the basepaths would have made him a solid jack-of-all-trades. Considering that he put up an unimpressive 9.82 ERA in five spring training appearances and will now have to rehab from his injury, though, it appears that he’ll have to put quite a bit more time into his craft before he’s ready to contribute in the majors as a pitcher.
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The Cardinals’ elbow injury epidemic continues with Schafer’s injury. Starter Lance Lynn is just making his return this spring after undergoing Tommy John in November of 2015, and the Cards also have four pitchers in camp–Marco Gonzales, Mitch Harris, Zach Duke, and Alex Reyes–who are in various different stages of rehab from Tommy John (or in Harris’s case, ligament repair surgery) this spring. Schafer will now be the fifth pitcher to join that group.