Blue Jays lose Jose Berrios to Tommy John surgery after years of durability

NEW YORK – The toll from a decade of durability for Jose Berrios came due Wednesday, when the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander underwent Tommy John surgery that will sideline him for the next 12-18 months.

An every-fifth-day reliability while pitching in 275 games, all but two of them starts, and logging 1,571.2 innings from 2017-2025 earned him the nickname La Makina, Spanish for The Machine, and made the news more jarring, even if his breakdown began last season.

Berrios was moved to the bullpen last September amid a rough stretch of outings and made just one relief appearance before elbow inflammation landed him on the injured list for the first time in the big-leagues.

During camp in February, he conceded that he had doubts about his health as far back as the previous spring, and while he tried to pitch through it, the effects showed in his numbers. In 30 starts overall, he posted a 4.06 ERA across 164 innings, but was at 3.26 through his first 17 starts and 5.37 in his final 13.

Still, following an off-season of healing, as well as mending fences after he left the team during the World Series, he felt strong this spring and was stunned when a stress fracture in his right elbow was found during an insurance physical for the World Baseball Classic. 

After a period of healing, Berrios resumed building up last month and was on the cusp of a return in early May when his velocity dipped in consecutive rehab outings with triple-A Buffalo. He also had more than the expected soreness. 

That led to a follow-up visit with Dr. Keith Meister and eventually, the Tommy John surgery, which wasn’t a certainty when the operation began due to a complicated diagnosis, as the stress fracture had broken off and caused irritation to the ligament.

Once found, that took all best-case scenarios off the table.

“Since we acquired him, he's just been steady, been part of what we're doing and reliable, obviously,” manager John Schneider said after revealing the news. “It's weird not having him. We were looking for him to just kind of get back to normal a little bit and he was hoping for that, too. … 

“It sucks for him. It sucks for us,” he added. “I know he'll attack the rehab. It's just the time part of it sucks and not having him here sucks, too.”

Berrios’ absence muddies the Blue Jays’ pitching picture both now, and in the 2027 and 2028 seasons, which are all but locked in at $24 million apiece now that he’s essentially certain not to exercise an opt-out at the end of this season.

What the 31-year-old can offer next year, if anything, and the year after is uncertain and removes a reliable base of innings from the rotation. More immediately, it eliminates the possibility of a return and further depletes a starting group that also lost Cody Ponce for the season, is still awaiting Shane Bieber’s first pitches of the season and is without Max Scherzer. 

The latter two continue making progress.

Scherzer said Wednesday that the tendinitis in his forearm that led to issues in his ankle and thumb resolved Saturday, when he threw pain-free at max effort at 90 feet and led to a bullpen Monday in New York. 

He’s due to throw another Thursday and barring any setbacks, “you can accelerate and you can ramp up fast because you're not actually coming back from a true injury,” he explained. “I can really ramp as fast as I want. … I can get to 60 pitches pretty quick.”

Bieber, meanwhile, could be pitching in rehab games by the end of next week “if all goes well,” said Schneider.

Spencer Miles is covering the rotation opening for now, either as a starter or as a bulk arm behind an opener, as the Blue Jays try to bridge the gap to their returns.

Throughout his career, when his teams were in such predicaments, Berrios served as a stability post that helped hold things together. Even for La Makina, there was no escaping the attrition of pitching as often, as consistently, as he did.

“There's always risk whenever you're throwing a ball,” said Schneider. “Pitchers know that. We know that. But it's frustrating because in order to be durable, there's so much that goes into it, in between your starts, off-season, all sorts of stuff that he was so good at, that a lot of our guys are really good at. And Pete (Walker, the pitching coach) is really good at communicating.

“With the durability comes a lot of wear and tear, a lot of innings over the course of however many years,” he continued. “The risk goes up as you do that. We've been pretty fortunate to have the opposite happen.”