Berríos to undergo surgery for elbow fracture

DETROIT -- José Berríos will undergo right elbow surgery on Wednesday, the Blue Jays announced, but we won’t know just how serious this procedure is until the doctors begin to operate.

Dr. Keith Meister will perform the surgery after meeting with Berríos over the past week to examine the stress fracture in his right elbow and the “loose bodies” that have followed. Right now, the worry is that there could be a more significant repair required.

“There may be some ligament stuff going on,” manager John Schneider said, “and I think they’re going to figure that out when they’re actually in there.”

This opens up a very wide range of potential outcomes for Berríos, who had been trying to pitch through the stress fracture since it was discovered in Spring Training. Just look at Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, who is back to playing catch just over a week after undergoing an elbow scope to clean up loose bodies, which used the less-invasive Nanoscope procedure.

Schneider said that, even in a best-case scenario, the Blue Jays would be looking at “a couple of months” without Berríos, but the worst-case scenario is a different reality entirely.

If the surgery does reveal ligament damage, particularly any level of damage to Berríos’ UCL requiring a repair, that could knock Berríos out for a year or more. This is the exact scenario the Blue Jays were hoping to avoid, but it’s been clear that there’s been a threat of something going wrong throughout this process, which finally popped up over Berríos’ last two rehab starts in Triple-A.

“There’s always risk with pitchers,” Schneider said. “Even if they’re healthy as can be, there’s always risk. That’s a risk that both he and we accepted when we said, ‘Keep throwing.’”

We’ll know more about Berríos’ recovery timeline by later in the week, but it’s important to frame Berríos as the pitcher he’s been throughout his career, not just the past eight months.

The 2025 season ended poorly for Berríos, and these elbow issues can be traced back to that. He landed on the IL for the first time in his MLB career, then chose to be away from the team during the World Series, something he eventually apologized for when camp opened this March. This has understandably tilted the public perception of Berríos, but it can’t erase the pitcher he was for so many years prior to this. He was also the Blue Jays’ nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award just last season.

For nearly a decade, Berríos was one of the most consistent and reliable pitchers in the Majors, a lock for 32 starts and 180-plus innings each season. The human body is only built to handle so much of that -- particularly the elbow -- but Berríos built a reputation as a workhorse and earned the Opening Day nod three times with the Blue Jays.

“He’s still a pretty damn good Major League pitcher,” Schneider said. “Taking last year out of it, he had a great offseason and really wanted to get back and help contribute. It’s been frustrating for him, for sure.”

Now, Berríos has a player option following the 2026 season, where he can opt into ‘27 and ‘28 at a salary of $24 million each season. How much of that he’s available to pitch, we’ll know soon.

This hurts the Blue Jays in the short-term, too. Prior to his last rehab outing on May 3, it felt like Berríos would rejoin the club for his next trip through the rotation. Instead, this news lands on a day where Toronto is using Mason Fluharty as an opener and fellow reliever Spencer Miles as the bulk guy. This should have been Berríos’ rotation spot, but now the Blue Jays’ wait continues, looking to the horizon for either Shane Bieber or Max Scherzer to return.

“I don’t think we were ever not counting on him,” Schneider said. “Whenever you lose a reliable, Major League starter, that sucks.”

This felt like the conversation we’d never need to have about Berríos, the right-hander who could just pitch and pitch without ever breaking. Now, two weeks shy of his 32nd birthday, Berríos is scheduled to undergo elbow surgery, and the Blue Jays are left to hope that worse news doesn’t come midway through that procedure.