MINNEAPOLIS -- Byron Buxton’s season is over.
Though it wasn’t a great surprise, it was still a disappointment for Buxton and the Twins to have it confirmed: the star outfielder will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his troublesome right hip on Sept. 18. The hope is that Buxton will be fully ready for the 2027 season.
“It’s one of those where I just don’t want to put the team in a bad position,” Buxton said. “Even though I’m fighting to come back, nobody knows if [a recurrence] would happen again and when it’ll happen again. But they definitely told me it would happen again. So that’s definitely where it was like, ‘That doesn’t sound fun.’ To know it’s going to happen, but you don’t know when it’s going to happen.”
Buxton, who is on the injured list for the third time this season as a result of the injury, had hoped to play again before the year ended, but he just didn’t have enough improvement to get back on the field.
“I think there was hope,” said manager Derek Shelton. “That’s a careful place to live, with hope, but I do appreciate, and I think I’ve talked about this, Buck is the consummate teammate, and I appreciate the fact that he even tried to put himself in a position to be able to come back.
“Ultimately, from talking to our medical group, and talking to him, it wasn’t getting better to the point that we thought he could play.”
Buxton has battled issues with his right hip off and on dating back several years, though it didn’t hamper him to any significant degree in 2024 or 2025. But it flared up on him in May of this year. He was able to continue playing at a high level while managing the condition throughout June and into July.
However, he felt worse in early July and went on the injured list, missing the All-Star Game. Upon returning from that IL stint, he never was able to reach the level of play he had in the first half. Two more IL trips didn’t knock the condition out, and it became clearer that he would require surgery at some point. On Friday, it was learned that he’ll have it sooner than later.
“I had those good days and bad days,” Buxton said. “I had a stretch where I'd go 4-for-8 and go, 'I'm about to turn the page.' Then, the next four days I was like, 'I don't know if I'm going to be able to turn the bat this at-bat.' I just took it day by day. We tried to manage it as best we could, keep the inflammation down. Honestly, I don't know what else we could have done to prevent it from getting where it's at. We did the shot. Gave it rest. Gave me a few years. I guess time just caught up to it.”
The silver lining for Buxton is twofold: one, an end to the uncertainty. He’s spent the past four months not really knowing even from day to day how the hip would feel, whether he would be able to perform at his expected level. Two, and more importantly, is the hope that the procedure puts his hip troubles behind him.
“Obviously it’s surgery, so it’s something that, at some point in time, it’ll probably come back,” he said. “But they definitely reassured me that I’ll be fine the rest of my career going forward. So that’s the encouraging part for sure.”
There is of course disappointment from the baseball side, as Buxton is the Twins’ best player, and it’s yet another piece of bad health news for a team desperately fighting to stay in contention. But the personal side stings, too. Everyone in the Twins’ clubhouse knows what Buxton has gone through with his extensive injury history, and they know how badly he wants to be on the field.
“He's a grinder, man,” said catcher Ryan Jeffers. “He's been fighting through this for a little while and he's done some unbelievable things this year. We all know the player he is, the person he is. Yeah, it puts the damper on the excellent season he had this year, but it doesn't put a damper on the impact he's had in this clubhouse and on the young guys. He's always going to be that type of person.”