Carlos Santana will have surgery Friday at Cleveland Clinic.
View full sizeCarlos Santana's 2010 season is over as a result of this home plate collision with Boston's Ryan Kalish on Monday night.BOSTON, Mass. -- If this is the good news regarding catcher Carlos Santana, what would the bad news have been?
Santana, the Indians top prospect, will undergo surgery on his left knee Friday at the Cleveland Clinic and miss the rest of the season. Lonnie Soloff, Indians head athletic trainer, said Santana will need the next four to six months to recover from the operation.
Dr. Rick Parker will do the surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. He will repair the strained lateral collateral ligament on the knee.
"Carlos is expected to make a full recovery by the beginning of the 2011 championship season," said Soloff.
Soloff said this was not reconstructive surgery, which usually requires six months to a year of recovery time, because Santana is not having a ligament from another part of his body or from a cadaver transplanted into his knee.
Santana was injured in a collision at home plate Monday night with Boston outfielder Ryan Kalish. On a single to right field, Kalish tried to score from second. Santana caught the throw from Shin-Soo Choo, turned and was rocked by Kalish's slide. He was knocked head over heels and a cleat in his left shoe spike caught in the dirt.
He held onto the ball for the out, but was taken off the field on cart with his left leg in an air cast.
Soloff said it is a rare baseball injury.
"Every indication is that the injury to Carlos' knee is outside the knee," said Soloff. "In a case of an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) or PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) surgery, those reconstructions are on the inside of the knee."