Royals MiLB: Kyle Zimmer To Have Surgery

Royals top prospect Kyle Zimmer’s season came to an end Tuesday when he decided to undergo thoracic outlet surgery to address his shoulder problems. The KC Royals hope he will be ready to return by next spring.

Soren Petro of 810 WHP AM in Kansas City tweeted the news Tuesday morning:

The 24-year-old Kyle Zimmer has flashed “ace” stuff in the five seasons after the Kansas City Royals made him a first round pick in 2012. Zimmer has been frequently rated among to top 100 prospects in baseball by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and MLB.com, due to his impressive 3.24 ERA and 10.9 K/9 as a minor league player.

However, in five partial seasons in the minor leagues, Kyle Zimmer has only managed to pitch 222.1 innings. That’s not very good when you consider that the Royals are developing him as a starting pitcher.

According to MLB.com reporter Jeffrey Flanagan, Zimmer has “neorogenic” thoracic outlet syndrome, which is the most common form and has the quickest recovery time:

More good news comes from Kansas City Star reporter Rustin Dodd:

While that sounds hopeful, constantly getting hit with 10 to 20 percent chances to end your career is a scary prospect. It doesn’t take too many such obstacles to start wondering if a prospect will ever achieve his upside. With Kyle Zimmer, the Kansas City Royals already have to be well past that point.

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They just don’t want to admit it.

The ironic fact here is that one of the big reasons the KC Royals went for Zimmer in the 2012 draft is that he only began pitching in college. His late conversion to the position made the front office hope that he would prove more durable than guys who had piled up a lot of innings on their arm going back to high school.

Instead, Zimmer has been more injury prone than any Kansas City Royals pitching prospect in recent memory.

I suppose we should be hopeful that Zimmer can come back. Chris Young fought for years with shoulder trouble before his thoracic outlet syndrome problem was finally diagnosed. Young was 2014 Comeback Player of the Year for Seattle in 2014 and enjoyed a terrific 2015 with the Kansas City Royals (11-6, 3.06 ERA in 123.1 IP) before turning into a gopher ball machine in 2016.

Next: Royals Report: Jarrod Dyson Grand Slam Saves Season

The funny thing is, Zimmer has never had the now-common “Tommy John” surgery on his elbow. Instead, he’s had an assortment of knee and shoulder problems that never seem to be terribly serious, but manage to keep him out of action. Let’s hope the thoracic outlet syndrome problem in his shoulder has been the source of many of his problems, and that fixing it will solve the issue.

I’m not holding my breath.