The Orioles announced on Wednesday afternoon that the surgery on Manny Machado's right knee was successful. Manager Buck Showalter told O's reporters in his pre-game comments that the timetable is such that Machado is expected to be fully available for spring training.
Machado suffered the injury in the process of swinging during an at-bat in a game on August 11. The injury was diagnosed as a partly torn ligament in his right knee. He returned to the same surgeon who operated on his other knee last October, Los Angeles-based Dr. Neal ElAttrache. The procedure was expected to be much the same, including a correction of an abnormality in Machado's knee that was present in his left knee. Wednesday as the ligament was addressed, they worked on the abnormality as well.
Showalter told reporters that Machado will spend three weeks in Los Angeles following the surgery. After that, he'll either head to Sarasota or join up with the Orioles to get his rehab started.
When Machado got his surgery done last October, both he and the Orioles maintained that he would be back for spring training and the regular season, which did not quite end up happening. There are two big differences this time around. The ligament is not fully torn, and even if the surgery has the same recovery time, Machado has gotten the surgery six weeks sooner this calendar year.
This season, Machado made his return to the MLB team on May 1. He didn't start getting hot at the plate until the end of June, although whether that was connected to either needing to fully recover or missing out on spring training as a chance to get back to game speed is not something we can know.
At the very least, if it takes the same amount of time for him to play again, he'd have about two weeks of spring training to get up to speed in 2015. If the partial tear shortens the recovery time, he should get most or all of spring training.
However far the Orioles get in the 2014 season, they'll have to get there without Machado.