Brusdar Graterol undergoes back surgery, could miss rest of 2026 season

What happened

Brusdar Graterol underwent back surgery and could miss the rest of the 2026 season, per Jack Harris of the California Post. The specifics of the procedure have not been disclosed, Harris reports, and no recovery timetable has been attached to the news. What is clear is that the Dodgers right-hander has now absorbed two significant surgeries in roughly eighteen months — a shoulder procedure in November 2024 preceded this latest development.

The back surgery arrives after Graterol had already missed all of the 2025 season. He has not appeared in a big league game since the 2024 playoffs, and per the California Post's report, he threw only seven regular-season innings in 2024 due to recurring shoulder troubles. The last time a healthy Graterol was a reliable presence in a major league bullpen feels, at this point, like a memory that requires some excavation.

Why it matters

The operational math here is straightforward and a little grim. Graterol is one of the more genuinely electric arms the Dodgers have had in their bullpen — a 2.78 career ERA across 190 2/3 innings is the kind of number that earns a pitcher a long leash and a prominent role. The problem, as Harris notes, is that Graterol has simply not been able to stay on the field. In six partial MLB seasons, he has reached 50 innings in exactly one of them. That is not a usage pattern; it is a recurring story.

The back surgery compounds what was already a lengthy absence. A pitcher who missed all of 2025 recovering from shoulder work and then surfaces in 2026 with a back procedure requiring its own recovery arc is not a resource the Dodgers can plan around in any near-term sense. Per the California Post's report, the possibility that he misses the remainder of the 2026 season is real — which would push his streak of unavailability well past two full calendar years of regular-season baseball.

For a club with the depth Los Angeles has assembled, the absence of any single reliever rarely constitutes a crisis. But Graterol is not any reliever. When healthy, he represents a different tier of late-inning option, and the Dodgers have been waiting — patiently, then less patiently — for that version of him to return.

The numbers

Graterol's career 2.78 ERA across 190 2/3 innings tells one story. The footnote beneath it tells another. He has pitched in parts of six MLB seasons and crossed 50 innings in only one of them. In 2024, the shoulder limited him to seven regular-season innings before he appeared in the playoffs. He has not thrown in a big league game since.

Those 190 2/3 career innings date back to his late-season debut with the Minnesota Twins in 2019 — meaning that across roughly seven years of time in the majors, Graterol has accumulated what a healthy mid-rotation starter might throw in a single season and a half. The ERA is legitimate. The workload is a ledger of what might have been.

A brief history of how Graterol got to Los Angeles

Minnesota traded Graterol to the Dodgers in the 2019-20 offseason in the deal that sent Kenta Maeda to the Twins, per the California Post's reporting. He arrived in Los Angeles with considerable fanfare — a power arm with a profile that suggested a high-leverage future — and has spent the years since demonstrating both why that projection made sense and why projections involving injury-prone pitchers deserve a raised eyebrow.

The shoulder procedure in November 2024 wiped out 2025 entirely. The back surgery reported by Harris now clouds 2026. The specifics of what the back procedure involved, and what the recovery demands, have not been disclosed, which means the "could miss the remainder of the season" framing from the California Post is the operative uncertainty here — a real possibility the club is apparently navigating, not a settled outcome.

Where the club stands

The Dodgers carry a 100-62 record, good for first place in the NL West, and have won three straight heading into a road series at Arizona. Emmet Sheehan is the reported probable for Monday against Eduardo Rodriguez at Chase Field, with Eric Lauer lined up for Tuesday against Michael Soroka. Shohei Ohtani is the reported probable for Wednesday against Zac Gallen.

A club at 100-62 and leading its division has the luxury of absorbing difficult news about a pitcher who was not in the active mix to begin with. The Graterol situation is not a roster emergency for a team in this position — it is a longer-term question about whether one of their more talented arms will ever be available for a meaningful stretch. That question, unfortunately, does not appear to be getting answered this season.

Under general league rules, pitchers can be placed on the 60-day injured list, which removes them from the 40-man roster count and creates flexibility for clubs managing extended absences. Whether and how the Dodgers adjust their roster construction in response to this news has not been reported.

What we don't know yet

The specifics of the back surgery have not been disclosed, per Harris. There is no reported timetable beyond the possibility of missing the rest of 2026. It is not known when Graterol might resume throwing, what the recovery protocol looks like, or whether the club has offered any public guidance on his status. The California Post's report frames the possibility of an extended absence as real but not certain — that uncertainty should be carried forward until the Dodgers or Graterol's representatives say otherwise.

What to watch

The obvious follow-up is any club statement or medical update that clarifies the nature of the procedure and attaches a recovery window to it. Given that the specifics were not available at the time of Harris's report, that information may emerge in the coming days — or it may not, which is its own kind of answer about where things stand.

More broadly, Graterol's situation is worth tracking simply because of what he represents when healthy. A pitcher with a 2.78 career ERA who has spent the better part of two-plus years away from a big league mound is not a closed chapter — he is a question the Dodgers have been carrying for a while now, and the back surgery is the latest entry in a file that keeps getting longer.