Brewers fans have been down this road with Brandon Woodruff before, and the scenery just got a lot more familiar. Woodruff got knocked out of his last start in Arizona after his velocity dropped off a cliff, and the MRI that followed reportedly turned up a new injury to the anterior capsule in his throwing shoulder. That's not a phrase anyone wants to hear about a guy who already had that exact area surgically repaired once.
Woodruff is 33 and has been through the wringer with this shoulder. He had the anterior capsule repaired by Dr. Keith Meister back in October 2023, a surgery that came with a brutal, multi-year rehab and didn't get him back on a big-league mound until July 2025. Now the same doctor is the one he's flying to for a second opinion on what the Brewers found, and that history alone is enough to make this feel like a gut punch rather than a routine setback.
This isn't even his first scare of the year. Woodruff missed nearly two months earlier this season recovering from minor surgery to remove a cyst, and Saturday's start in Arizona was only his third outing since coming off the injured list. He's now had three separate shoulder-related setbacks going back to last September, when a lat strain ended his season early -- and, weirdly enough, both velocity dips this year came in starts against the Diamondbacks.
For a Brewers team that's leaned hard on pitching to stay competitive, losing Woodruff for any real stretch is a problem, and for fantasy managers who rostered him hoping the ace was finally healthy, this is exactly the red flag you dread. A second opinion doesn't automatically mean another surgery, but going back to the guy who cut into that shoulder the first time isn't the kind of news that inspires confidence.
Now it's a waiting game. Nobody's putting a timeline on anything until Meister weighs in, but the anterior capsule finding alone puts every version of the worst-case scenario back on the table for a pitcher who's already lost the better part of two seasons to this exact shoulder.