The Atlanta Braves have announced that injured starting pitcher Hurston Waldrep will have to undergo “Tommy John” surgery and fellow starter Spencer Schwellenbach will also have surgery on the same elbow fracture he suffered last year.
Waldrep will likely miss all of 2027. No timetable on Schwellenbach is available.
More information is below.
Ahead of today’s press conference with Walt Weiss, the Atlanta Braves broke the news that both Hurston Waldrep and Spencer Schwelenbach were officially ruled out for the rest of the 2026 season. They made sure to mention that Waldrep was having Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow and that Schwellenbach was having surgery to repair the same elbow fracture that has already kept him on the shelf for so long.
While it may not be all that surprising, it’s certainly not shocking considering how things have gone. We never really got any updates about Schwellenbach getting any closer to returning to the mound outside of vague updates about how he was throwing. With September on the horizon, this was as good of a time as any to unfortunately shut the door on any talk about Schwellenbach returning this season. It’s definitely unfortunate that this all stems from a freak accident last season. Now it’s cost him all of 2026 and is likely going to cost him a chunk of the 2027 season as well. It’s a real bummer.
Meanwhile, it sure seems like Waldrep had a serious setback between now and back when he was given the “all clear” to resume throwing. No matter what happened, it’s still a bit of a bummer to see that the setback did occur and that Waldrep can be ruled out for this season. Waldrep only managed to get through 10.2 innings here in 2026 and he gave up 10 runs during that time, so it was clear that something was up during that time. Now Waldrep will be on the shelf for a considerable period of time while getting back into action.
In other injury news, Walt Weiss was asked about the status of Spencer Strider and he didn’t have much to proivde in terms of an update. He didn’t say as to whether or not Spencer Strider has been throwing off of a mound yet, so we’re still very much unclear on a return timetable for Strider any time soon — much less here in the 2026 season. We did get a tiny bit of an update on Robert Suarez, though — Weiss shared that he’s been throwing from 120 feet lately and that whenever that’s starting to happen, you’re really “putting something on it,” as the manager explained when he was discussing Suarez’s status.
So of all four pitchers, the only one who appears to have a remotely positive outlook is Robert Suarez since he’s slowly but surely ramping up. Spencer Strider’s status is unclear and both Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep are done for the season and then some. It’s lame but that’s baseball for you! Hopefully everybody involved can continue to move in the right direction in terms of recovery and that there are no more setbacks in the future.