No labrum repair needed in Yasmani Grandal shoulder surgery

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers got relatively good news with the arthroscopic surgery on the left shoulder of Yasmani Grandal last Wednesday, in that the catcher did not require any repair to his labrum.

"We knew there was a chance that we might had to do the labrum. But obviously I didn't want to take longer to come back," Grandal said on Monday. "So I was very happy to hear that the labrum wasn't touched once I woke up from the surgery."

Grandal has a 45-minute procedure to repair the A/C joint in his left shoulder on Wednesday in Los Angeles, performed by team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache.

The initial timetable for recovery was that Grandal would be ready for spring training in February, but there was a chance of possible labrum repair that would have complicated things.

Adrian Gonzalez had surgery to repair a torn labrum in October 2010, and Matt Kemp had the same in November 2012. Hanley Ramirez had the same surgery before the 2007 season, then after re-injury had open surgery to repair his shoulder in August 2011. In all three cases, the players went through a power outage that took more than a year from which for their power to fully recover.

Grandal struggled through the inflammation in his left shoulder down the stretch, ending the regular season in a 6-for-94 slump with one home run over the final 54 games of the season, after hitting .295/.400/.513 with 15 home runs in the first two-thirds of the season.

ElAttrache spoke with Cary Osborne of Dodger Insider about the procedure, which provided a more positive outlook that had Grandal would have had a labrum procedure:

ElAttrache said players with [labrum] surgery usually don’t start swinging a bat for five months. In the AC joint surgery, there is no repair to heal. Bad tissue is trimmed out during the surgery and the swelling and inflammation goes down in six weeks and the full range of motion usually returns in 12 weeks.

Josh Hamilton and Jayson Werth each had AC joint surgery this year. Hamilton had surgery in early February and returned to Major League action on May 25. Werth had surgery in early January and was back April 13.