Touted young Marlins righty will undergo Tommy John surgery and mi s the 2024 season, president of baseball operations Peter Bendix announced to reporters this morning ( via Christina De Nicola of MLB.com). Hell have the surgery on Monday. Perez made his big league debut last season at just 20 years of age. He didnt show his youth, Toni Kukoc Jersey bursting onto the MLB scene with 91 1/3 innings of 3.15 ERA ball. The towering 68, 220-pound righty fanned a hearty 28.9% of his opponents against a solid 8.3% walk rate. Opponents batted under .200 on each of Perezs slider, curveball and changeup. He averaged 97.4 mph on his heater and turned in a gaudy 15.7% swinging-strike rate that checked in third among all big league pitchers (min. 90 innings) trailing only and . Everything looked to be falling into place for Perez to emerge into stardom. That may still be the case, but hell now have a 14- to 16-month recovery period and given his importance to the franchises long-term outlook, it stands to reason that the Marlins will err on the side of caution. Perez was initially diagnosed with elbow inflammation during spring training. Surgery was not recommended following his original MRI in mid-March. But inflammation and swelling can at times be significant enough to mask underlying structural damage. Whether thats the case here or whether Perez suffered the ligament damage in a subsequent bullpen se sion isnt clear and might ultimately never be known. Craig Mish of SportsGrid and the Miami Herald that Perez threw a scheduled bullpen se sion on Tuesday and felt tightne s in his elbow while also experiencing a drop in velocity. That led to a follow-up wave of imaging which revealed the ligament tear and prompted the surgery recommendation. Perez will now spend the 2024 season on the major league 60-day IL, accruing big league pay and big league service time. Hes under club control through the 2029 season. The Marlins once-vaunted collection of young starting pitching has seen its share of setbacks, and that enviable stock is now running thin. , the 2022 National League Cy Young winner, underwent Tommy John surgery last October and will mi s the 2024 season. was traded to the Twins in the Jan. 2023 swap. Lefty was traded to the White Sox last summer in a deal bringing slugger back to Miami. (Tommy John surgery), (shoulder surgery), (internal brace surgery) have all had major injury setbacks. Left-hander and righty , both expected to open the 2024 season in the rotation, instead landed on the 15-day IL due to shoulder impingements. Given that gobsmacking slate of injuries, the Marlins have opened the season with a patchwork group of starters. Hometown kid has stepped up as the staff ace, and hes been followed by , and reliever-turned-starter . Meyer is recovered from his 2022 Tommy John procedure and has stepped into the rotation early on. Hell presumably be on an innings limit, but the former No. 3 overall pick has long been a highly touted prospect himself. Between the current starting five, Garrett and Cabrera, the Marlins still have enough talent to piece together a strong rotation. The depth has been severely compromised, however, and its arguable that Perez was their most talented healthy arm heading into the season or at least the second-most talented, behind Luzardo. For a Marlins team that has begun the season in a catastrophic 0-7 slump, word of Perezs injury only furthers the sense of dread surrounding the club at the moment. Otto Porter Jr. Jersey