Laureano could miss remainder of season after hip surgery

SAN DIEGO -- Padres left fielder Ramón Laureano could miss the remainder of the season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right hip, manager Craig Stammen said on Friday.

It’s a devastating blow for a Padres offense that has already struggled mightily this season. Laureano has dealt with a balky hip for most of the past five seasons, and has generally been able to play through it. But last weekend in Washington, he alerted the team that the condition had worsened, and on Friday he opted for surgery.

Here’s what it all means for Laureano and the Padres:

Laureano’s timeline

It’s entirely possible that Laureano -- a free agent after the season -- has played his final game for San Diego.

Laureano arrived last summer in the Trade Deadline deal that also brought Ryan O’Hearn to San Diego. Laureano made an instant impact, posting an .812 OPS down the stretch, though he missed the postseason with a fractured finger he sustained when he was hit by a pitch.

Laureano started this season just as strongly as he’d finished last season. On April 15, he was hitting .292 with a .921 OPS. It’s unclear exactly when his hip started barking, but it clearly impacted his performance. By the time Laureano was placed on the IL on Tuesday in Philadelphia, he was hitting just .203 with a .660 OPS.

In 2021, when the hip first became an issue, Laureano opted against surgery and received an injection. Stammen noted that surgery was prescribed at the time. This time, Laureano chose to go that route.

It leaves his status for the remainder of the season in doubt. Laureano could be available if the Padres were to make a run in October. (Of course, not having Laureano available all summer would seem to lessen those chances in the first place.)

“There’s a chance,” Stammen said when asked about the likelihood of Laureano playing again this season. “Some guys have come back from this surgery quicker than it -- I think the typical timeline is that four-to-five month range.”

In the meantime, Laureano will rehab the injury at the team’s Spring Training complex in Peoria, Ariz.

How do the Padres make up for Laureano’s absence?

In the starting lineup, replacing Laureano feels fairly straightforward. Gavin Sheets, Ty France and Miguel Andujar have been sharing time at first base and DH this season. The simplest solution now is: Sheets in left, France at first (where he’s a Gold Glove winner) and Andujar at DH.

But that leaves the Padres extremely thin on the bench. And considering the bottom of their lineup often features Sung-Mun Song and either Rodolfo Durán or Freddy Fermin at catcher, this team could really, really use a viable pinch-hit bat or two.

They thought they had one of those in Nick Castellanos. But Castellanos was designated for assignment on Wednesday, amid his struggles adjusting to that role. He was hitting just .191 with a .560 OPS.

Another scenario sees the Padres continue to use Sheets, Andujar and France in a three-for-two setup, leaving one on the bench each night. That could allow them to platoon some version of Jase Bowen, Bryce Johnson and Samad Taylor in left field -- all superior defenders to Sheets. In fact, that’s how they lined up for their series opener against the Mets -- with Johnson in left. But that left them with a light-hitting bottom third in which all three hitters sported an OPS of .560 or worse.

In any case, the clearest way for the Padres to make up for Laureano’s absence is for their superstars to hit. Manny Machado, Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. have not nearly met expectations this season, though lately there are encouraging signs that they could be trending upward.

What does this mean for the Padres, big picture?

It’s not great. The Padres’ offense had scored the fewest runs in the Majors entering Friday and will now be without Laureano, who figured to be an integral part of their lineup.

“It’s a big loss,” Stammen said. “This is a guy that we were counting on a lot coming into the season and a guy that we had batting leadoff for a while. He’d been in a little bit of a funk lately. Maybe [the injury] was the reason for it. Unfortunate that he had to go have surgery.”

The Trade Deadline looms. The Padres were almost certainly already looking at adding a corner bat. That need is even greater now.

But as a team, the Padres are also mired in their roughest stretch of the season, losing nine of their last 10. With their loss in Philadelphia on Thursday, they fell out of the playoff picture for the first time since April.

If they want to be buyers at the Trade Deadline, they’re going to need to win games first. And that just got more difficult without one of their most impactful offensive players.