Prelander Berroa is throwing again less than a year after Tommy John surgery, but standard recovery timelines suggest patience will be required before he’s back in Chicago’s bullpen.
Sorting out the pitching situation is going to be a tall task for the Chicago White Sox during spring training — and that burden will carry into the regular season.
Not only do the White Sox have a lot of fringe MLB talent competing for spots in both the starting rotation and the bullpen — much of it young and still unproven — they also have several pitchers recovering from injury who will eventually complicate the picture even further.
Chicago lost a number of young pitchers to Tommy John surgery early in the 2025 season. That’s a devastating setback for any organization, and it significantly thinned out the White Sox’s depth after entering the year believing pitching was one of their greatest strengths.
Starters Mason Adams, Drew Thorpe, and Ky Bush were all lost for the season. Reliever Prelander Berroa was as well — a particularly tough blow, considering he had a real chance to emerge as the team’s closer if healthy.
Berroa is an especially interesting case, because videos from the White Sox spring training complex in Glendale have already surfaced showing him throwing off a mound. That alone has fueled excitement among fans eager to see him rejoin a bullpen that already features multiple hard throwers capable of touching 100 mph, including Grant Taylor, Jordan Hicks, and Jordan Leasure.
But what does the actual timeline look like?
After a UCL strain was confirmed following a Cactus League appearance in late February, the White Sox announced that Berroa would require Tommy John surgery on March 7, 2025. The procedure was performed on March 17, 2025, which means he is still less than 11 months removed from surgery.
Relievers like Berroa often ramp up faster than starters because they don’t need to build up the same level of endurance. Still, given Berroa’s explosive arm, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the White Sox take a more conservative approach. They have historically been cautious when it comes to injury risk, and there is no pressing reason to rush him back in 2026, a season not expected to be about contention.
Throwing a bullpen session around the 11-month mark is encouraging progress, but standard recovery timelines still point to 12–15 months before returning to game action. Splitting the difference and calling it 14 months puts Berroa’s potential game return around mid-May.
From there, he would still need minor league rehab appearances to build pitch counts and face live hitters. How quickly that process moves will depend on how the next two to three months go and how his command looks post-surgery.
All things considered, it would be surprising to see Berroa pitch in an MLB game for the White Sox before June at the earliest — and it could take even longer for Thorpe, Bush, and Adams.
On the bright side, that timeline gives the organization plenty of time to evaluate its bullpen options and sort out what the pitching mix is truly going to look like moving forward.