Reds top prospect Nick Senzel will have surgery to remove bone spurs

Reds top prospect Nick Senzel has spent the last month or so out in Arizona taking part in the Reds instruction league, where he’s been getting some run in the outfield in order to insure peak positional versatility for the Reds in 2019. And the early review have been pretty great, as relayed from The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans:

As it turns out, however, he was only fielding in the instructional leagues, and not hitting. Bobby Nightengale over that the Enquirer broke the news today that Nick Senzel has been dealing with a sore left elbow and, because of that, will require a procedure to remove some bone spurs.

It’s been a tough year for Senzel, as he saw only 193 plate appearances in the minor leagues this season while dealing with a couple of different ailments. He missed most of the month of May dealing with symptoms from vertigo (something that also caused him to miss games in 2017) and, then, he missed the final two months of the season after fracturing an index finger.

Finally healthy, the Reds sent Senzel to instructional leagues to get him some run in the outfield and, apparently the plan was to keep that rolling into the Arizona Fall League. Unfortunately, lingering pain in the elbow became too much to continue playing through and Nick and the team have opted to get the situation cleaned up. He’ll miss four to six weeks of the offseason program, but is expected to be perfectly fine come Spring Training.

None of this really spells doom for the team’s hopes of finally, finally putting out a competitive product in 2019, but it’s becoming concerning to see the injuries begin to pile up on the Reds best position prospect in some time. It has to be extremely frustrating for Nick and the team. I guess the best hope is that everything sorts itself out now, in October of another lost year, rather than, say, July of 2019.