Drew Thorpe to undergo Tommy John surgery, Brandon Drury has left thumb fracture

PHOENIX -- A healthy version of the White Sox roster was expected to have plenty of adversity to work through this season. As Cactus League draws to a close, injuries are providing second helpings.

"It's part of the game," said manager Will Venable. "It happens across the league every year and we're just going to deal with it the best we can."

The team announced Saturday morning that starting pitcher Drew Thorpe will need to undergo Tommy John surgery on his right elbow, two days after he had to leave a two-inning minor league rehab outing midway through his second inning warm-ups. To whatever degree the impact of Thorpe's loss is dulled by the fact that he hasn't pitched since last July and the White Sox already had to plan a five-man rotation without him, word that non-roster invite and former Silver Slugger winner Brandon Drury suffered a fractured left thumb Friday during defensive practice is a more immediate blow.

Armed with a mechanical tweak and reunited with multiple hitting coaches (Marcus Thames with the Angels, Alan Zinter and Joel McKeithan with the Reds) that he had worked with previously, Drury was hitting .410/.439/.821 with a restored feel for driving the ball in the air. Even as a non-roster invite signed just before spring, Drury was looking like a potential middle-of-the-order option for a Sox team light on offense.

"We were doing a drill and he just collided with a runner as a first baseman, just a throw that took him up the line and just a tough break," said Will Venable. "Brandon has looked amazing. Seeing him the last couple of years and knowing how good ‘23 was and then ‘24 being a struggle, it really did look like the ‘23 version and very much himself."

"I'd love to have Brandon Drury on the team," said Mike Tauchman a day earlier, Drury's locker neighbor at Camelback Ranch. "If you look at his track record, that's a really good hitter that can lengthen the lineup."

Drury will still need to be added to the 40-man roster if the Sox intend to store him on the major league injured list, and as a Type XX(b) free agent, this weekend is normally the time where the 32-year-old would be contractually enabled to exercise an opt-out if the White Sox didn't put him on the opening day roster. Drury is expected to be shut down from baseball activities for at least two weeks with a ramp-up period afterward, but a full recovery timeline will come after Drury has a follow-up visit with a specialist on Monday. Only after that visit will both sides talk to make a determination on Drury's roster status. With his past success and strong showing in camp, keeping in Drury in tow seems like the move, but the Sox won't make a declaration until their ducks are in a row.

"He certainly was in the mix for at-bats," Venable said. "We're still trying to figure out how all those get together with so many guys on the fringe health-wise, and I think it was really going to be a game-time decision--or a late decision on how all this fits together."

Thorpe's 2025 season has been star-crossed since he revealed a setback to his rehab from surgery to address a bone spur in his pitching elbow at SoxFest. While Thorpe described the tightness he felt in his elbow earlier this week as a new feeling and his most recent MRI showed an increased level of damage, he said the operating theory from Dr. Keith Meister is that repeated flare-ups he's suffered since undergoing his surgery last September were ultimately his UCL failing on him.

"It feels like I worked my ass off to get back, so it’s kind of a gut punch," Thorpe said. "A handful of guys in the locker room have gone through it. It’s just kind of the part of the life of the pitcher in baseball at this point. It will be good to have them to fall back on."

But a full-blown elbow reconstruction at the end of spring will eat into Thorpe's 2026 campaign in addition to knocking him out for all of this year. Despite the five-start streak of six innings or more, two runs or less that Thorpe mixed in last season, his first taste of major league action left a lot of unanswered questions about how his stuff will play at the highest level, especially since the revelation of the bone spur already suggested he was less than 100 percent healthy throughout his brief tenure. Now, any clarity on those questions will have to wait until deep into the 2026 season.

"Comeback time is 12-to-14 months so I should be [back] maybe early-to-mid next year," Thorpe said. "I’m not going to put a timetable on it right now. It’s really far away. I’ll push to get there as soon as possible. That’s the goal."

Moreover, while the emergence of Shane Smith has allowed the White Sox to fill out an opening day five-man rotation without diving into their starting depth, they eventually will need to, and will find that group meaningfully depleted when they do. Thorpe joins Ky Bush as White Sox hurlers who made starts last season who are now out for the year with TJ, and the excitement around Mason Adams' progress in camp has been stalled by a flexor strain. Even though he's on the 40-man roster, Juan Carela would have needed a strong campaign to debut in Chicago sometime this year, but he too has also has undergone Tommy John surgery this spring.

Free-agent addition Bryse Wilson profiles as the first choice for a sixth starter when the need inevitably arises, but emergences--and health--for the likes of Jairo Iriarte, Justin Dunn and Nick Nastrini will take on greater importance.

"This maybe more impacts the depth in Triple-A," Venable said of starter depth. "The guys that we had, like a [Jared] Shuster, we had stretched out early and then shortened up, I think they'll stay in those types of roles. And you're just looking at the Triple-A rotation depth being what we're now going to be looking at to help us out here."

FIRST PITCH: MARINERS VS. WHITE SOX

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