Right-hander Mike Vasil will miss the entire 2026 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, dealing a crushing blow to an already weak Chicago White Sox pitching staff.
The worst fear for the Chicago White Sox has become reality.
The club announced Tuesday morning that right-handed pitcher Mike Vasil will undergo Tommy John surgery, sidelining him for the entire 2026 regular season.
Vasil had looked sharp in a spring training start against the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend, but exited early with right elbow discomfort.
After the outing, he told reporters there wasn’t a single moment where something felt wrong—just a nagging sensation that ultimately led him to speak up and remove himself from the game.
Vasil was one of—if not the—most valuable pitcher on the White Sox roster last season. He logged 101 innings with a 2.50 ERA and led the team in Win Probability Added (WPA), per FanGraphs. Not only was he expected to play another meaningful role and eat a significant chunk of innings, but he had also emerged as a legitimate dark horse candidate to crack the starting rotation.
In fact, it looked like he was winning that job before the injury.
Originally acquired via waiver claim just before the start of the 2025 season, Vasil quickly established himself as a key piece of the White Sox’s future core. And not for nothing, he’s also one of the more vocal leaders in the clubhouse—a player teammates genuinely rally around on a daily basis.
And perhaps the most brutal part of all this: not only will this injury wipe out his entire 2026 season, but because it occurred so late in spring training, Vasil will likely miss multiple months of the 2027 season as well.
Just look at Mason Adams, Prelander Berroa, and Drew Thorpe—each underwent Tommy John surgery around this time last year, and none have returned to game action yet.
There’s really no other way to put it. This is a nightmare for the White Sox.
It’s a devastating blow to a pitching staff that already looked thin relative to the rest of the American League. And with Vasil now out for the year and Kyle Teel sidelined four to six weeks with a hamstring strain, the building excitement around the 2026 White Sox has taken a noticeable hit over the past week.
Concerns about the pitching staff’s ability to take a meaningful step forward in 2026 were already present. Without Vasil in the mix, those concerns only intensify.
Don’t be surprised if some of the organization’s young starting pitching prospects get opportunities at the big-league level this season, potentially stepping into a swingman-type role similar to what Vasil provided.
Chicago is going to need every inning it can get—and it just lost one of its most valuable Swiss Army knives.