Madrigal to miss rest of 2021 season after hamstring surgery originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
While the Chicago White Sox remain hopeful they'll get injured outfielders Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert back before the end of the 2021 season, they will be without their starting second baseman the rest of the way.
The team announced Tuesday that Nick Madrigal, who tore his hamstring last week, will miss the remainder of the campaign after having surgery. The White Sox expect him to be without restriction come spring training next year.
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Madrigal became the latest White Sox starting position player to go down with a significant, months-long injury but is the first to be ruled out for the rest of the season. The team had a positive update on Jiménez just a day earlier, announcing that the left fielder was cleared to resume baseball activities and is moving into the next phase of his recovery from a ruptured pectoral tendon suffered at the end of spring training. Robert, meanwhile, remains on the mend after tearing his hip flexor in early May.
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Madrigal, whose brief rookie season in 2020 was impacted by a separated shoulder, entered 2021 looking to show that there was a whole lot more he could do. And he was on a particular hot streak prior to tearing his hamstring last week against the Toronto Blue Jays. The book now closed on his 2021 campaign, he hit .305 with a .349 on-base percentage, even flashing some much discussed power with a couple home runs.
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But he'll start the 2022 season, his third in the major leagues, with just 83 games under his belt.
Meanwhile, the White Sox will continue to lean on Danny Mendick and Leury García as reserve fill-ins at second base. Perhaps, as the trade deadline nears, Rick Hahn's front office will search for outside solutions, though the general manager said just last week that it's still early in the calendar for those types of impact moves to be made.
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