Marlins outfield prospect to undergo season-ending hip surgery

Marlins outfield prospect Dillon Head will undergo season-ending hip surgery, Isaac Azout of Fish On First reports. More specifically, Christina De Nicola of MLB.com reports that Head will require a left femoral acetabular impingement procedure. 

He’s expected to resume baseball activities in roughly three months, per Azout, though that mid-to-late September return to baseball activity won’t give him sufficient time to ramp back up to game action before the regular season concludes.

Head, 19, was the centerpiece of the early-season trade that sent Luis Arraez from Miami to San Diego. He appeared in only five games in Miami’s system this year — three shortly after the trade and another two following a lengthy IL stint — and will now lose the remainder of the season rehabbing from this surgery.

In 104 plate appearances with the Padres’ Class-A club before the trade, Head slashed .237/.317/.366 with a homer and three steals (albeit in seven attempts). He was inactive for 10 days following the trade, then appeared in just three Class-A games with the Fish before landing on the injured list. Head went 4-for-12 with a triple and two steals in that brief look.

A first-round pick (No. 25 overall) out of Illinois’ Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School just last summer, Head is viewed as a speed- and contact-oriented outfielder whose wheels could help him develop into a plus center-field defender as he continues to hone his reads. 

MLB.com ranks him fifth among Miami farmhands and credits him with true 80-grade speed. FanGraphs lists him third in Miami’s system behind Max Meyer and 2023 first-rounder Noble Meyer (who was selected 15 picks before Head in that draft).

Head was already viewed as a long-term development play at the time of the trade given his youth, and the loss of virtually his entire age-19 season will only further that likelihood. 

He’ll turn 20 in October and will enter the 2025 season with just 37 career games and 177 plate appearances at the Class-A level. 

Presumably, he’ll head back to Class-A Jupiter to open the 2025 season (health permitting) and work his way up the minor league ladder. A big league debut in 2025 doesn’t feel realistic, but late in the 2026 season or some point in the 2027 season could feasibly be when he is ready for a look in the majors.