Braves star prospect set to undergo Tommy John surgery: What it means

The Braves No. 3 overall prospect JR Ritchie is undergoing Tommy John surgery, but what does that mean for Atlanta and the development of the 19-year-old?

The number of pitching injuries for the Atlanta Braves is getting absurd at this point. Max Fried and Kyle Wright remain out for another month (at least), Ian Anderson has already undergone Tommy John surgery, and numerous others have seen their share of time on the IL as well.

And apparently the injury bug is now spreading to the lower levels of the organization. Even worse, it’s now hit one of the club’s top prospects, 19-year-old JR Ritchie.

The Braves selected Ritchie 35th overall in the 2022 MLB Draft and MLB Pipeline has the young right-handed pitcher ranked as the No. 3 overall prospect in Atlanta’s farm system behind Jared Shuster and his fellow draftmate Owen Murphy. But on Wednesday, Geoff Pontes of Baseball America reported that Ritchie will undergo Tommy John surgery, which obviously ends his 2023 season but will keep him out for the 2024 season likely as well.

Braves No. 3 prospect JR Ritchie undergoing Tommy John surgery: What it means

While the surgery for Ritchie does feel like piling it on given the situation with Braves injuries to pitcher this year, the long-term outlook for the young hurler should not be a negative one, even with 1.5 years being on the shelf and recovering.

Ritchie won’t turn 20 years old until late June this year and has already shown some great stuff in Single-A, notably posting a 1.05 WHIP in four outings this year with Augusta. He’s young enough that he should have every opportunity to recover and then bounce back to a major league career. Moreover, the fact that the plan is to give him ample time to recover works in his favor as well.

This situation is actually not dissimilar to the aforementioned Max Fried, who had Tommy John surgery during his age-20 season in the minor leagues, was given plenty of runway to get healthy again, and has obviously gone on to enjoy immense success for the Braves since.

That, of course, isn’t a guarantee that JR Ritchie will go on to become a Fried-like presence in Atlanta, but it is to say that the Braves do have a smally established track record of young, highly-ranked prospects undergoing the serious surgery and ending up having fruitful careers.

So yes, it’s not ideal that the 19-year-old Ritchie will be out until 2025. At the same time, however, it definitely shouldn’t diminish the overall optimistic outlook on him as a prospect given all of the factors at play.