No official announcement has been made, but Mark Bowman of MLB.com reports that Braves setup man Jonny Venters is expected to have Tommy John elbow surgery after meeting with Dr. James Andrews.
This would be Venters’ second Tommy John surgery, with the first coming in 2005 when he was a 20-year-old at low Single-A. He’ll miss the remainder of this season and likely a big chunk of next year as well.
Venters has been overshadowed in the Braves’ bullpen by closer Craig Kimbrel, but he had an incredibly dominant stretch from 2010-2012 in which he threw 230 innings with a 2.23 ERA, .212 opponents’ batting average, and 10.1 strikeouts per nine innings. And he was ridden very, very hard by manager Fredi Gonzalez.
UPDATE: Venters had the surgery this afternoon.
