CHICAGO - Byron Buxton’s right hip is at the point where surgery is increasingly on the table, and Twins manager Derek Shelton said Friday that’s the direction the club appears to be headed as the outfielder tries to sort out a long-running impingement.
“Yeah, I think surgery is part of it,” Shelton said. “I think [general manager Jeremy Zoll] kind of mentioned that when we initially talked about it when Walker [Jenkins] came up.
To be specific on what the surgery is, we can't until we get to that point. I'm not going to speculate on that.
We see where he's at over the next week, the next few days, wherever he's at and see how it improves. And then when we have to make the determination on where he's at, then we'll do it from there.”
Buxton has been dealing with hip problems on and off since 2021. Last season brought a rare reprieve, with the outfielder avoiding major issues and putting together his healthiest year in a long time. That changed in May, when the hip flared up again and started another stretch of uncertainty.
Even with the injury hanging over him, Buxton kept performing at a high level through July. Then the issue came back hard enough to send him to the injured list over the All-Star break. Since returning, he hasn’t been able to match the production he posted in the first half, and this is already his third IL stint of 2026 tied to the injury.
His latest absence began Aug. 30 after a recurrence in Sacramento on Aug. 25. Buxton is traveling with the Twins as they open a six-game road trip to Chicago and Detroit, but he still hasn’t started baseball activities.
“The difficulty is because you've got to work your way back into baseball activity,” Shelton said. “The other thing is, we only [have] 22 games left.
There's a combination of things. The biggest component to this is the teammate that Buck is, and his want to get back.
We owe it to him to be able to explore all those options before we go down a different route.”
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