Mookie Betts undergoes successful knee surgery

The Red Sox have announced that Mookie Betts underwent a successful surgery on his right knee on Thursday.

The good news: Mookie Betts is expected to be fully ready for spring training. The bad news: Mookie Betts underwent surgery. An arthroscopy, chondroplasty, and “loose body removal” to be precise.

I’ll save you the trouble of heading to Wikipedia to look them up, but do note, I am not a doctor. Arthroscopy and chondroplasty are referring to “minimally invasive” procedures on joints and cartillage—in this case the knee. Loose body removal is exactly what it sounds like, and typically are the result of bits of cartilage and/or bone breaking off and just, well, hanging out in the joint.

Nothing sounds too bad, and we see plenty of players go into the offseason and get some minor maintenance work done, as it were. Of those, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess that 99% of them had gone under the knife. Still, this is Mookie Betts we’re talking about, and when you have a young player coming off a season that might well win the MVP, you’d prefer the only news between now and spring training come in the form of an extension.

So fingers crossed for good measure. But at least for now it sounds like Betts will be fine.