Astros pitcher McCullers to miss remainder of season following surgery

HOUSTON — Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. will miss the remainder of the season after undergoing surgery Tuesday night to repair the flexor tendon in his right forearm and remove a lima bean-sized bone spur, general manager Dana Brown announced Wednesday.

McCullers, 29, is expected to return to pitching during the 2024 season. Brown said the team did not have an exact timeline for when McCullers would return, but he could possibly start throwing again in November, and “then we will see in January where he is and how much he can get amped up.”

“With this surgery, we feel good because at the end of the day, it was just this flexor tendon and the bone spur, which gives him a chance to come back sometime in ’24,” Brown said.

The right-hander has not pitched this season after aggravating the injury while throwing a bullpen session in West Palm Beach, Florida, in February at the start of spring training.

“Initially, we thought that the bone spur was a little bit smaller, but when they went in, it was more of a size of a lima bean as opposed to something smaller, which we think ultimately was causing some of the discomfort in the arm,” Brown said. “The decision was made to have surgery, and talking with Lance, he’s feeling a lot better right now about things and his future.”

He initially injured the flexor tendon while pitching in Game 4 of the 2021 AL Division Series against the White Sox.

McCullers missed most of last season, returning to start eight games and going 4-2 with a 2.27 ERA. He went 0-1 in three starts in the postseason last year, allowing 11 runs in 15 1/3 innings, including seven runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Phillies in Game 3 of the World Series.

“Lance is grinder, and he tried to with pure grit fight through the injury and come back,” Brown said. “That happened in ’21, and in ’22, he ended up coming back some. You could give him cheers for his grit to come back. Starting out this year, he felt like he was going to be fine and continue to press through it and it continued to bother him.”

McCullers is 49-32 with a 3.48 ERA in seven major league seasons. He missed the 2019 season following Tommy John surgery.

Brown said there was nothing done to the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) during McCullers' surgery, adding, “it was in good shape.”