Ky Bush Shut Down With Lat Strain

The White Sox have shut down left-hander Ky Bush due to a lat strain, per Scott Merkin of MLB.com. He won’t return this season. He is already on the 60-day injured list and will stay there through the end of the campaign.

That will make it two completely lost seasons for Bush, who underwent Tommy John surgery in February of 2025. He missed all of last season recovering from that procedure, which normally requires 14 months or more of recovery time. Getting back on the mound in the second half of 2026 could have been a possibility and Bush started throwing this summer but this lat strain will prevent him from getting into any official game action in 2026.

Bush was once a prospect of note. The Angels took him in the second round of the 2021 draft and then flipped him to Chicago in the 2023 deadline deal which sent Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López to Anaheim. In 2024, Bush made his major league debut but posted an unimpressive 5.60 earned run average in 17 2/3 innings. His work in the minors that year was far better, as he put up a 3.30 ERA in 106 1/3 innings. His 10.6% walk rate was a bit high but his 23.1% strikeout rate and 44.3% ground ball rates were both solid numbers.

Ideally, he would have been continuing his development in 2025 and 2026 but that has not happened. The one upside for him personally is that he has been collecting big league pay and service time, spending each of the past two seasons on the 60-day IL.

The Sox and Bush will be hoping that better health is just over the horizon. Though he was a starter before this injury odyssey, perhaps the club would consider deploying him as a reliever next year to manage his workload after such an extended absence. He still has two option seasons remaining. The IL goes away five days after the World Series, so Bush will need to be added back to the 40-man for the winter or else be removed somehow.