Triple-A right-hander Fitts undergoes season-ending lat surgery
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HOUSTON -- Triple-A Memphis right-hander Richard Fitts will miss the rest of the 2026 season following surgery earlier this week to address a right lat strain. Fitts was acquired in the offseason by St. Louis in a trade that sent Sonny Gray to Boston.
Fitts was placed on the Minor League injured list on Monday and he underwent surgery on Wednesday, according to Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom.
“Upon further examination with imaging, it was an injury that just required surgery to get to the other side of,” Bloom said. “Unfortunately, it is season ending. Long-term prognosis should be good. We’re confident he’s going to bounce back and be fine, but he’s not going to pitch again this season.”
Fitts was 2-0 with a 1.76 ERA and 11 strikeouts in 15 1/3 innings in three starts for Memphis this season. He allowed one run on four hits and two walks to go with three strikeouts in five innings in his last outing on April 9, but he left after throwing 68 pitches (37 strikes).
“Lats can be tricky,” Bloom said. “In my experience, I am not a doctor, but having been around these things [enough to know] where you do sometimes need to give a little time from the moment of injury. But also to use imaging to see how serious is this? Is there a tear? And what is the nature of that to where are you going to feel like you are going to need surgery to get past this? That’s something the imaging and specialist can help with. You don’t know really until you see that. It was pretty apparent on the imaging that he got it pretty good.”
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Fitts went 2-5 with a 3.97 ERA in 15 games (14 starts) over two seasons with the Red Sox. He started three games for the Cards in Spring Training, allowing six runs with nine strikeouts over 9 1/3 innings.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said Fitts threw well in the spring, and he was someone the club had planned to count on during the regular season.
“It’s something that we were definitely going to count on him to provide some innings and help when the time presented itself this year,” Marmol said. “Really unfortunate, because it’s someone we definitely would have liked to see, and he’s just a really good competitor. He showed really well during the time we had him in spring.”