MLB Trade Rumors confirmed it Saturday: Brandon Woodruff is having season-ending surgery on his right shoulder, a repair of the anterior capsule that's basically a repeat of the same procedure that already cost him the entire 2024 season. For a Brewers team that's been living off pitching depth for the better part of a decade, losing its longest-tenured player and de facto ace for the rest of the year is about as bad a break as it gets.
Brandon Woodruff To Undergo Season-Ending Shoulder Surgery t.co/KLAju2BmGT
This isn't Woodruff's first rodeo with this exact injury, which is what makes it sting more. He tore the capsule down the stretch in 2023, had it surgically repaired that October, and didn't pitch again for nearly 20 months. When he finally came back last July, he looked like himself again, going 7-2 with a 3.20 ERA over 12 starts before a lat injury shut him down in late September. This year he'd been dealing with discomfort from a cyst forming in the labrum area, got pulled from a start against Arizona on July 4 with his velocity dipping, and the Brewers put him on the IL. Now it's a full shutdown, and a second capsule surgery at age 33 is not a small thing to come back from.
Woodruff had actually been excellent in his 9 starts this season before the injury flared up again, posting a 2.98 ERA with 47 strikeouts over 45 1/3 innings. He'd accepted Milwaukee's $22.025 million qualifying offer over the winter to stay put for 2026, betting on himself to prove the shoulder was behind him. Instead he's now facing a rehab timeline that, if his last recovery is any indicator, could stretch well into 2027 and puts real doubt on whether he pitches for the Brewers again at all.
For Milwaukee, the timing is brutal. The Brewers have quietly built one of the better rotations in baseball around a mix of Woodruff's experience and younger arms, and losing their most established starter for good removes any margin for error the rest of the way. Woodruff himself pushed back on the doom and gloom, telling reporters the surgery announcement felt like people were writing his obituary and insisting he's not done — his goal is still to pitch again. But for now, the Brewers have to figure out how to patch a rotation hole that's become an annual problem, and the guy who's been through this exact rehab once already has to do it all over again.