St. Louis Cardinals right-handed pitcher Alex Reyes just can’t seem to shake the injury bug.

Reyes will miss the remainder of the 2018 season following surgery to repair a tendon in his right lat. An official update was provided by the Cardinals earlier on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old Reyes, who will turn 24 in August, is expected to make a full recovery within six months and be ready for spring training coming February 2019.

“The good news is that when they went in, the tendon was partially frayed. It wasn’t completely torn off, which means there is good blood flow. Which means it’s very optimistic for recovery,” St. Louis Cardinals general manager Michael Girsch said.

MLB Pipeline, which is MLB’s official prospect rating system, has Reyes ranked as the 15th best prospect in baseball, and the top overall prospect in the Cardinals organization despite missing all of 2017 and the first month of this season with his recovery from Tommy John surgery.

Reyes’ 2018 season will end after just pitching 4.0 innings, the sixth start of his MLB career. All 4 of those innings came in his May 30th start against the Milwaukee Brewers, where his velocity started to waiver in the 4th inning. Reyes struggled to generate swing and misses from Milwaukee hitters in the team’s 3-2 loss, striking out just two and walking two in the outing.

Luckily for St. Louis, they have another pitching depth within the organization to compensate for the loss of Reyes. As things stand right now, the Cardinals will likely go with Carlos Martinez, Miles Mikolas, Michael Wacha, Luke Weaver, and Jack Flathery in their starting rotation to finish out the year barring no other health issues. It should be interesting to see where Adam Wainwright would fit into the puzzle if he was able to return this year, as he is currently on the 60-day disabled list with right elbow inflammation.

Since Reyes will serve his disabled list stint on the Major League disabled list, it will effect his service time clock. Redbird Dugout’s Jon Doble notes that next April, Reyes will have accumulated 2 years and 55 days of official Major League service, making him arbitration eligible for the first time in 2019 despite pitching only 50.0 innings at the MLB level.

While rehabbing at the minor league level this season, Reyes flat out dominated by not allowing a single earned run across four starts. He had 44 strikeouts in just 23.0 innings and only yielded seven walks while not allowing a single home run. In his rehab start for Double-A Springfield, Reyes struck out 13 in 7.2 innings, and then struck out 13 in 7.0 innings for Triple-A Memphis in his next start.

For his MLB career, Reyes has a 1.44 earned run average in 13 games.

Photo: Morry Gash/Associated Press