Johan Rojas needs season-ending surgery on his elbow

Johan Rojas tore his UCL while ramping up baseball activities to return from his 80-game PED suspension. He needs surgery. He’s done for the year. The Phillies announced he’ll have surgical repair with an internal brace in the next couple of weeks with the plan to be ready for Spring Training 2027.

Johan Rojas is OUT for the rest of the year

Phillies Medical Update on Johan Rojas: pic.twitter.com/fP63FDmW1h

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) June 10, 2026

“Season-ending surgery” is a generous term for a guy whose season never technically started. Rojas was suspended in March for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. His earliest return date was June 25th.

Now he’s heading to the operating table instead of the outfield. The man was banned for PEDs, spent three months rehabbing his way back, and blew out his elbow before he could play a single game. You can’t script a more pointless season than that.

I’m going to be honest. I was done with Johan Rojas the second the PED suspension dropped. An outfielder who couldn’t hit while juiced up is not someone I’m losing sleep over. The defense in center field was legitimate. Nobody is going to argue that.

Rojas could run down fly balls and make plays that most outfielders can’t but a .228 career average with a .593 OPS while apparently taking performance-enhancing drugs?

What were the drugs enhancing exactly?

It wasn’t the bat. If you’re going to get suspended for PEDs, at least have numbers that suggest the substances were doing something. Rojas was juicing and still couldn’t hit. That’s a special kind of failure.

Missed by Nobody: Johan Rojas

The Phillies moved on without him the moment the suspension was announced. Crawford took over in center. Marsh stayed in left. Garcia is in right. The outfield has its issues but Johan Rojas not being part of it hasn’t been one of them.

The Outfield Depth Problem Gets Worse

Johan Rojas was supposed to come back June 25th and provide a bench option for the remaining 82 games. He was ineligible for the postseason because of the suspension, so his value was limited to regular-season depth. Not a star. Not a starter. Just a fourth outfielder who could play defense and give guys a day off. Even that modest contribution is gone now.

Steward Berroa is currently filling the fourth outfielder role. Sosa gets time in left against lefties. Neither of them is an answer to anything beyond short-term roster management. The bench is thin. The outfield depth is nonexistent. If Marsh’s finger acts up again or Garcia goes into another extended slump or Crawford needs a breather, the Phillies are running out there with guys who belong in Triple-A.

Same Problems. Different Month.

The Phillies can’t get the outfield right. The Phillies can’t get anything right on the right side of the plate. The same problems that have defined this season since April are still here in June and now they’ve lost even the modest depth piece that Rojas would have provided.

Right-handed hitters are slashing .217 as a team. Dead last in baseball. Garcia has been better over the last week with three homers in five games but one hot stretch doesn’t erase two months of .195 hitting. The lineup against left-handed starters is 4-13 and historically awful. The bench can’t produce. The outfield depth is a guy they claimed off waivers a month ago.

The trade deadline need for a right-handed bat just got louder. Again. Rojas wasn’t going to fix the right-handed hitting problem but he was at least going to be a body in the outfield who could run and catch.

Now the Phillies don’t even have that. Whatever Dombrowski does before August, the outfield has to be part of the conversation. A right-handed outfielder who can actually hit and provide depth behind Marsh, Garcia, and Crawford would address two problems at once.

The Phillies keep finding new ways to have the same old problems. The right side of the plate. The outfield depth. The bench production. The inability to score against left-handed pitching. Different month on the calendar, same issues on the whiteboard.

Johan Rojas was never going to be the solution to any of it but losing even a marginal depth piece when you’re already running on fumes in the outfield is another reminder that this roster needs help before the deadline. Dombrowski knows it. The numbers scream it. The question is what he does about it in the next seven weeks.

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