Diamondbacks dealt slew of bad injury news on pitching front

DENVER — In a season where the list of injured pitchers for the Arizona Diamondbacks just keeps growing, the franchise was dealt even more bad news on Friday.

Reliever A.J. Puk, who last pitched on April 17, will be out for the remainder of this season and perhaps beyond after having his left elbow surgically repaired on Friday. The 30-year-old southpaw was acquired from the Miami Marlins at the 2024 MLB trade deadline and has a 1.78 ERA in 35.1 innings over 38 games since coming to the desert.

Arizona manager Torey Lovullo stopped short of saying Puk was having Tommy John surgery as the status of the ligament in the elbow was still in question at the time he met with the media at Coors Field before the Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies began a three-game series.

"If the ligament is still in place, they won't replace the ligament," Lovullo said. "They'll just do that external bracing. If the ligament is damaged and they need to put a new ligament in there, yeah, it will be official Tommy John. Right now, they're going to go in there and take a look at it and then see what they need to have done."

Lovullo added that he believed it was just Puk's ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) that was in question and not the flexor tendon.

While Puk has been out of action since mid-April, the news adds another layer to what has been an incredibly long list of Diamondbacks pitchers who have missed time and will continue to do so this season.