Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche will have season-ending surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder, the team announced after Tuesday’s win over St. Louis. The surgery will be performed by team’s orthopedic physician Dr. Wiemi Douoguih in the District on Thursday.
LaRoche met with Washington general manager Mike Rizzo, the organization’s medical staff and his agent, Mike Milchin, on Tuesday when the final decision to have surgery was made. No word on a rehabilitation timeline. That’s because Douoguih isn’t sure what he’ll find when he opens that shoulder. A smaller tear would mean three-to-fourth months of rehab. A larger one could mean closer to six or seven. Either way, the Nats expect LaRoche to be ready for spring training next February.
“Hoping it’s just a clean-up,” Douoguih said. “But we’ll be prepared to do everything needed to get [LaRoche] healed and properly treated to get him back for spring training.”
The Nats tried everything to avoid surgery. LaRoche first experienced pain throwing during spring training, but said as long as the pain didn’t affect his swing at the plate he would live with it and get the problem fixed in the fall. But what was small tear, according to an MRI during spring training, worsened during the season. LaRoche was still a force in the field, where he’s long been considered one of the sport’s best defensive first basemen. But he had a miserable time hitting with a .172 average and just seven extra-base hits before he finally went on the disabled list after a May 21 game in Baltimore.
LaRoche and the team’s medical staff tried rest, anti-inflammatory drugs, a cortisone injection and then more rest and two solid weeks of shoulder strengthening exercises. But even after all that LaRoche realized the shoulder was no better. It was time for the next step.
“I had it in my gut a couple of weeks ago when I started this rehab process I thought there was a chance this would happen,” LaRoche said. “I really didn’t want to talk about it. It was something I was obviously hoping would go in the other direction. But it didn’t. I’m confident that we did everything we possibly could if it needed surgery or not. I’m comfortable with it now.”
LaRoche, 31, signed a two-year, $16 million contract with a mutual option for 2013 in the offseason. He replaced slugger Adam Dunn, whose skills didn’t fit with Rizzo’s idea of a defense-first, athletic roster. LaRoche said he’s never had surgery – not even to have his wisdom teeth removed.
Speaking with reporters after the announcement, he used words like “disappointing” and “frustrating”, but said because he wasn’t stubborn about his treatment he was fine with the way things turned out. The team’s medical staff took the necessary precautions in spring training to keep the injury from worsening. It was worth rolling the dice to see if the shoulder improved. Just didn’t happen and LaRoche didn’t want to get into a situation where he waited longer and risked cutting into next season, too.
“Well, it’s disappointing because it negatively affects the ballclub,” Rizzo said. “It takes a gold-glove caliber, defensive first baseman and 25 homers and 100 RBI out of your lineup, which would affect any team. But again there’s nobody feeling sorry for the Washington Nationals. We have to move on. We feel that we had secondary plans in place to fill that void – and it will be a void. Not only his defense and his offense, but his leadership.”
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