The enduring injury saga for Grayson Rodriguez has reached an apparent conclusion. The Orioles right-hander will undergo season-ending elbow surgery next week, interim manager Tony Mansolino confirmed.

General manager Mike Elias said last Friday that surgery was on the table. The operation will be a debridement surgery meant to remove bone, thus correcting an impingement Rodriguez has felt since spring training. Rodriguez will miss the rest of the 2025 season — a season lost from the start. He never threw a pitch in a competitive game.

Elias said Rodriguez is expected to be ready for spring training in 2026.

“We feel for him,” Mansolino said. “The organization feels for him. That’s a guy that we’re really planning on here in our organization to get where we want to go, in terms of the season and the postseason. Very unfortunate. It’s not for a lack of effort, by any means, by him or by our medical staff and all the people involved. It’s just a very unfortunate circumstance.”

The issues for Rodriguez have been catalogued throughout his time in the minors and majors. The 25-year-old has dealt with recurring lat strains, and one ended his 2024 season. He entered spring training with a slightly altered delivery, hoping to take stress off that muscle.

But elbow impingement issues cropped up during spring training, and he was shut down from throwing. He received a cortisone injection to reduce swelling. Once Rodriguez began throwing again, he suffered a lat strain.

As he began working back from the lat strain, he was pulled back from his throwing program again in July because of elbow discomfort related to the impingement. He didn’t undergo surgery earlier due to the medical advice of inside and outside counsel.

“At the time, that was the opinion of all medical parties, including outside opinions, to treat the injury conservatively before we go diving into an elbow surgery,” Elias said.

Mansolino said he couldn’t speculate as to whether the debridement elbow surgery would alleviate the recurring lat strains; he said that question was better served for medical professionals.

The Orioles banked on Rodriguez being a major part of their plans this season, especially after right-hander Corbin Burnes departed in free agency. The injuries to Rodriguez, right-hander Zach Eflin and others played a role in the poor start in April and May. And those who were healthy didn’t perform well for much of the season. The result is this: a lost year, for the team and Rodriguez.

He has shown promise. The hurler was Baltimore’s top-ranked pitching prospect and showed that potential with a 3.86 ERA in 20 starts last year. But he hasn’t been available enough to become the dominant ace Baltimore hopes to have. Still, with a winter of recovery from this surgery, the Orioles will once more plan on Rodriguez pitching valuable innings in 2026. However, there may be deeper backup plans this time around.

“All these last couple seasons have shown us that pitchers are going to get hurt, and you need a lot of them,” Elias said last week.