The Pittsburgh Pirates announced that 23-year-old right-handed pitcher Mike Burrows had Tommy John surgery yesterday. The timeline to return to action has him back no earlier than late June of next year.
Burrows is one of the top pitching prospects in the system. He was likely going to make his big league debut this season. The Pirates added him to the 40-man roster over the off-season. He made ten starts and two relief appearances for Triple-A Indianapolis last year. He gave up two runs over 6.2 innings in his two starts this year.
With that amount of experience, along with early success, it certainly appeared that he wasn’t far from being ready to appear in a big league game, before he went down with an injury.